What are we here for 





BY 

F, DUNDA& TOBB 




Class__E 

Book.__ 

Copyright N° 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT; 



What Are We Here For? 



BY F. DUNDAS TODD, 









CHICAGO : 

THE PHOTO-BEACON COMPANY. 

I90I. 

Eastern Office: 611 to 621 Broadway, New York. 



The ubrary of 

60MGRESS, 

Two Copies Received 

NOV. U 1901 

COPVRIGHT ENTRV 

JtffV- tr-nfoi 
CLASS COKKo. no. 

a f O 3K 
copy a. 



■T7 



Copyright, 1901, by F. Dundas Todd. 



Entered at Stationers' Hall, London, England. 



CONTENTS, 



PAGE 

Chapter I. Answer 5 

Chapter II. Education 12 

Chapter III. Work 22 

Chapter IV. Intelligence 29 

Chapter V. Disease 35 

Chapter VI. War 42 

Chapter VII. Commerce 54 

Chapter VIII. Morality 66 

Chapter IX. Humanity 84 

Chapter X. Religion 97 

Chapter XL Success 118 

Chapter XII. Conclusion 137 



PREFACE. 

These are the day-dreams of a worker. Very prob- 
ably the idea they enunciate is old, but to him it is new, 
and possibly may be so to others. They are published 
in the hope that they may prove to be a reasonable 
working hypothesis to induce greater individual and 
collective effort for advancement of the human race. 



What Are We Here For? 



CHAPTER I. 



Whatever we are here for we are doing. 

Not in any narrow sense do I make this assertion. 
I do not mean that the man who farms or bakes or buys 
and sells or teaches or heals is on this earth to follow 
that particular occupation, but I do insist that we are 
fulfilling the purpose of our being. 

We are either here for a purpose or we are not. If 
we have no mission on earth, if we merely happen to 
be, a very little consideration would soon decide for us 
how we ought to live to get the most out of life, for 
this being the only life, there would be no good reason 
for trying to live unless we enjoyed it. I will, how- 
ever, defer discussion of this proposition until I have 
dealt with the affirmative form. 

If we are here for a purpose, we must be fulfilling 
it. This ought to be a self-evident proposition ; but for 
countless years the members of the human race have 



WHAT ARE WE HERE FORT 

been convinced that all our natural efforts are antago- 
nistic to the end of our being, and therefore any counter 
theory must be backed up with reasonable proof. The 
existing opinion is based entirely on writings that claim 
to be a revelation from the Creator. They may be true, 
and we may have faith that they are so, but when we 
come to a question of belief, which is opinion founded 
on reasonable premises, we must follow the scientific 
method of reasoning and argue from facts, for, as 
has just been said, while the other data may be abso- 
lutely true, we have no means of verifying them at 
present, and therefore any conclusions based on them 
are liable to be seriously wrong; while, if we argue 
from premises that may be studied from many points 
of view, there is a possibility of reaching a sound con- 
clusion. Truth is absolute, and will ring true every 
time a fact is brought in contact with it ; if it fail but 
once it is not a truth, but a sophism. 

The evolutionist after years of struggle has at last 
been able to convince thinking men that nature does 
not make misfits ; that, while in individual cases there 
may exist defects more or less serious, yet the type is 
admirably suited to its environment, and therefore the 
organism is assuredly fulfilling the purpose of its being. 
The full force of this conclusion has not been altogether 
appreciated by students of humanity, for on every hand 
we hear lamentations that man is undoubtedly vile 



ANSWER. 7 

because of this very instinct to act along natural lines, 
and constant effort is being made by appeals to his 
reason and especially to his emotions to throw off the 
natural man, be reborn, and to endeavor to live another 
life wherein the new-born tendencies of his mind will be 
at constant variance with the natural law that is in his 
frame, and just as much as he can suppress the latter 
so will his success be measured. 

Now, is there any good and sufficient reason for 
supposing that the universal law that admittedly gov- 
erns all life inferior to man should not also apply to 
him? He lives and moves and has his being exactly 
like his fellow creatures, differing from them only in 
the attributes of his mind. Seeing that he is controlled 
by every law that affects them, so far as he and they 
have qualities in common, we are forced to the conclu- 
sion that all life is dominated by the same laws ; that 
as the bodies of all are wonderfully adapted for life 
under certain conditions, so must the mind of all ani- 
mals be fitted for the particular sphere they will natu- 
rally inhabit. And since their bodies are at every 
moment actively working out their mission, I am com- 
pelled to believe that their minds are just as continu- 
ously working out their chief destiny. 

To me, then, the mind of man is not a something 
that has a natural perverse tendency to do what is 
wrong, but is rather possessed with an instinct to do 



8 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

what is right according to natural laws ; but we have 
seized hold of it in its formative stage, forced it into 
unnatural channels and then complain because it does 
not conform to the standard we have set up as correct. 
I must not be understood to be asserting that every 
natural mind is disposed to develop and work along 
true lines, for I must acknowledge defects in individual 
cases as in our bodies, but I insist that the type is right, 
and it is our bounden duty to ourselves to study that 
and to work along natural channels. 

My first contention then is, that whatever man is on 
this earth for, he is doing, and doing every instant of 
his life. The infant mewling and puking in his nurse's 
arms, the schoolboy creeping unwillingly to school, the 
lover sighing like a furnace, the soldier seeking the 
bubble reputation at the cannon's mouth, the justice full 
of wise saws, the lean and slippered pantaloon, the old 
man in his dotage — all are doing one thing above mere 
living. The naked savage of the Australian bush, the 
muscular Kaffir of South Africa, the dusky native of 
Hindustan, the Indian of the pampas and prairies, the 
Esquimaux of the frozen North, the patient Chinaman, 
the fierce Mohammedan, the plodding German, the 
vivacious Frenchman, the stolid Briton and acute Yan- 
kee — one and all have an occupation in common. 

Whether we are at play or at work, in town or in 
country, under the blue vault of heaven or a roof of 



ANSWER. 9 

man's construction, in the hovel or in the palace, by 
night or by day, during every waking minute and prob- 
ably while we are asleep — we are always doing one 
thing. Willingly or unwillingly we do it, and when 
we do it willingly it must give us the greatest pleasure 
that poor human mortals can know. 

What, then, is this universal occupation? I know 
of only one answer ; it consists of but one word, but it 
tells what I conceive to be man's mission on earth, the 
purpose of his being. He is learning. 

But what are all men learning? Human knowledge 
is already very diversified, human interest is shown in 
multitudinous directions, in some that are useful, in 
others that are hurtful; but if my theory be correct 
every member of the human race must be acquiring the 
same kind of knowledge, and once acquired it must be 
beneficial to them both physically and mentally, must 
add to their bodily comfort and broaden their minds 
and provide them with food for reflection. Nay, more, 
each bit of knowledge won will be in its turn an incen- 
tive to still further effort in the same direction. Again 
the answer comes clear and definite, all men are 

LEARNING FACTS OF NATURE AND THE GREAT LAWS 

that govern them. And everybody will admit that it 
is the knowledge and application of nature's laws that 
differentiates the civilized man from the savage. 

I will advance my theory a step further. If man's 



10 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

mission on earth is to learn, no individual can ever 
know it all, and the human race as a whole at any one 
time can never collectively know all that is possible to 
be known about nature and nature's laws. As fast as 
we advance toward eternal truth it recedes from us, 
and what today may be considered as a whole, tomor- 
row will be found to be but a part of something bigger. 
So individual men, nations and the human race will, so 
long as they inhabit this earth, find something to be 
learned. 

I can only liken man's career here to an expe- 
rience I once had. One misty day I started to ascend 
for a little distance a mountain about a thousand feet in 
height. After climbing some little time, I saw as I 
thought, the top, and hastened toward it, being much 
surprised to find it so near and so accessible, but on 
reaching it I found it to be only a knoll ; however, the 
top was seemingly visible a little bit above. Again I 
urged my steps upward and again I found disappoint- 
ment, for a new top vaguely loomed through the mist. 
This happened at least a dozen times, always new inter- 
est and new pursuit wiling me upward to a goal I had 
not at the start desired to reach. But at the end I was 
rewarded, for within a few feet of the real top the mist 
failed and, breathless with the exertion, I stood on the 
peak, and more breathless with amazement I drank in 
the most glorious prospect my eyes have ever beheld. 



ANSWER. II 

Overhead the sun shone in its glorious radiance, while 
underneath, as far as the eye could see, there stretched 
a wondrous billowy sea of cloud, gloriously white, with 
here and there a tinge of blue to indicate the waves in 
this ocean of vapor. But the path by which I had trav- 
eled was hid, all but the few yards just below me. So 
it is with man. He sees the summit of his ambition just 
a little bit ahead of him, but when he attains it he finds 
the real summit has receded, and so on he clambers 
through life. Rarely does he get above the clouds ; but 
I will suppose I have in this case, and from this point of 
view I propose to study a few of the multifarious 
interests of humanity in general and see how they are 
affected by my theory, and how my theory affects them. 
If it be true, every phase will be forcing us into that 
channel, and should we find this to be the case, it will 
be very much easier and pleasanter for us to help the 
natural forces than to try to oppose them. 



WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 



CHAPTER II. 

EDUCATION. 

Very frequently I am appalled with the vagueness 
with which men conceive the meaning of terms they are 
constantly using and how they cover up the paucity of 
their thoughts by the use of high-sounding phrases and 
a perfect flow of words. I speak from sad experience 
in educational matters, for I have been both pupil and 
teacher, having spent almost thirty years within the 
walls of a schoolroom. Education has been briefly 
defined as " leading out of an individual what is in 
him," but broadly speaking I have found it to be 
cramming into him what he did not want. And when 
the task is completed we are amazed to find that the 
result is too often different from what we expected; 
that, in fact, after bending the young tree we are sur- 
prised to see it is crooked for life, and then we lay all 
the blame upon the perversity of human nature. 

Well, let us just look nature square in the face and 
see what it wants to be at, and let it get there by the 
shortest possible route. And for that purpose I know 
of nothing better than a young child, just able to give 



EDUCATION. 13 

expression to his simple emotions, for he is freshest 
from nature's hand, and has but few " improvements " 
wrought upon him. What is in that child? Watch 
him and see. Does a cat or dog come his way, see how 
frantic he becomes to reach it. Can he toddle round, 
then watch him clutch at the flowers and chase the 
birds. See how he rejoices in the rays of the sun, how 
he marvels at his shadow, how he is fascinated by the 
glorious moon and twinkling stars. Wind makes him 
laugh as he staggers against it or scurries along in 
front of it, rain amuses him, and snow fills him full of 
glee. He must handle everything, aye, and taste it. 
He is busy every waking moment learning about facts 
of nature. He discovers some things to be hard, some 
soft; some heavy, others light; some round, others 
not; some big, some small. Then when he can use a 
few words, listen to him. Every sentence begins with 
Why? When? Where? How? and they come forth 
as a flood, all about things that grow and live and move. 
Oh, what a wonderful world it is, and how busy he is 
trying to learn all about it ! 

And how do we treat this tender plant fresh from 
nature's garden? Do we nurture it in nature's way? 
No, we cultivate it. At first we humor the little man 
because he amuses us, but our interest fades and his 
questions get beyond the limit of our knowledge, and 
soon our answers begin with " Don't," winding up 



14 WHAT ARE WE HERE FORT 

finally with the sweeping remark, " Don't bother me." 
We head him off from following his natural ten- 
dencies, then we commence to train him according to 
our ideals. At its best it is little better than a cram- 
ming process whereby we introduce certain undigested 
matter into his head, and we fondly expect him to 
remember it all to utilize it in taking care of his body 
and providing for its sustenance. Every minute of the 
day he is in contact with facts of nature which he must 
endeavor to utilize for the benefit of himself and fel- 
lows, yet we think it most important that he should 
know the date of a king's birth or of a battle, the exact 
height of a mountain in feet, or the length of a river in 
miles ; but only recently have we begun to realize that 
possibly it is advisable to know something about soils, 
strengths of materials and the chemistry of cooking. 

The benighted savage of Central America displays 
more sense than we do. His children are born as igno- 
rant as ours and their very existence depends upon the 
knowledge of certain elemental facts. On every hand 
he is surrounded by fruits, some nourishing to his sys- 
tem and some injurious, certain animals that are dan- 
gerous, others that are not. His food supply is largely 
dependent upon his skill in securing it, so his parents at 
the very outset teach him what he may eat and what he 
must avoid, what animals he must shun and what he 
may disregard. This is practical education and along 



EDUCATION. 15 

nature's intents, but, unfortunately, it does not proceed 
very far. Man there as here has his theological beliefs, 
and these he thinks paramount, so he takes the brain of 
the young child and encases it in a solid cast of doctrine 
that not only prevents him, but forbids him investiga- 
ting, learning and thinking about nature and nature's 
laws. The individual learns a little, but the aggregate 
advance is slow, for it is only by the happening of inci- 
dents and events that the mass of people learn, and 
these must be repeated at short intervals before the 
facts become impressed upon the public mind, their 
importance appreciated, and at last admitted into the 
category of knowledge considered by the priest as per- 
missible. 

The theological idea in education is a very persist- 
ent one, and no people or race is to be found where it 
does not pertain. In comparatively recent times in 
public schools it formed practically the only subject 
taught, the idea being that a thorough theological 
course of study made men moral. We have this con- 
spicuously illustrated in the early public school system 
of Scotland, a country that has always been considered 
in the front rank of popular education. Its school sys- 
tem from the time of the Reformation until 1871 was 
practically controlled by the clergy, and their concep- 
tion of education was to teach the youth to be able to 
read the Psalms of David, the Proverbs of Solomon, 



l6 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

the Four Gospels, and to repeat the Shorter Catechism 
without a verbal mistake. 

The results were not what was expected, and so the 
idea of " Humanity " was conceived, and tacked on to 
the other. In order to broaden men's minds and fit 
them for judicious consideration of present-day prob- 
lems, the ideas of people who flourished two thousand 
years ago, their conceptions of morality and manly con- 
duct, their ideas of justice and law, were laboriously 
crammed into the heads of the rising generation, and 
behold it was found that educated men were not always 
good ones, that the imaginings of brilliant men twenty 
centuries ago did not teach them to see things as they 
actually were in their own days. 

It is rather interesting to unearth the beginnings of 
things, as the original idea is very often vastly different 
from the one that pertains, once the fact becomes per- 
sistent. Take, for instance, this theological-humani- 
tarian conception of education and we can readily 
understand that it took its origin from the fact that the 
only educated individuals then were to be found in the 
ranks of the priesthood, who, as a matter of profes- 
sional efficiency, had to study theology, Latin and Greek. 
Therefore when the noble baron developed a desire for 
his sons to be scholars they drank at the only fountain 
there was. So by pure accident these became the chief 
studies of the schools, and such they remained until a 



EDUCATION. 17 

very recent date, but other reasons had to be found for 
their retention. Thus today we find a new line of 
defense in favor of Latin being taught, that it helps 
very materially in understanding the meanings of 
words in our own language. Whether this be true or 
not, it can be put to a very practical test, for it so hap- 
pens that in the medical profession there are in use 
hundreds of technical terms that are strictly classical in 
their origin, and a little patient inquiry among doctors 
should determine whether they found their knowledge 
of Latin useful or not. My own investigation showed 
that each individual memorized the term as such just as 
any one would do who was absolutely ignorant of the 
language. This coincides with my own experience, for 
I can not recollect any occasion when I was helped to 
an understanding of the meaning of a word until I con- 
sulted a dictionary. 

But education in recent years has been more or less 
in the melting pot and new ideas have been coming 
fast. About the middle of the nineteenth century the 
cry became " Let us equip the young folks with weap- 
ons with which to fight the battle of life." And so they 
proceeded to pile a mass of cold facts on top of the 
theological-humanity system then existing. I call them 
cold facts, for this was the melange I was forced to 
swallow, and I look back with a shudder on my school 
days. By persistent application of a leather belt the 



l8 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

young folks of my day were compelled to learn the 
Shorter Catechism, the Psalms of David in meter, 
such cold, uninteresting data as I have already men- 
tioned, to which was added the illogical spelling of 
thousands of English words, the only relief being the 
hour for arithmetic, when our young minds were per- 
mitted to revel in the study of constant law. How sup- 
posedly intelligent men could dream that the fact of 
Mount Blanc being so many feet above the sea level or 
the river Nile being so many miles long would ever help 
a boy who was to wrestle a lifetime with soil, wood, 
stone or cloth in an effort to make a living, is more than 
my mind can conceive, but the fact remains that such 
was their ideal. The growing plant was in their hands 
and they bent it as seemed to them best. 

Let us see if we can not get a sound practical defi- 
nition of education. The child learns much at school — 
and forgets most of it, so that if our aim be to store his 
head with useful information the result is practically a 
failure. Surely such can not therefore be our aim. I 
can best liken educating a child to starching a collar, 
for when the work is done there is little of the starch 
in the collar, but the effect is there. What, then, is the 
effect we want in the child when he has finished his 
school career? So far as I can judge it is summed up 
in three words — to appreciate differences. We want 
him to observe, to reason, to remember. Any individ- 



EDUCATION. 19 

ual who can observe correctly, reason soundly and 
remember perfectly will prove to be a good and useful 
citizen in any community. 

If such be our ideal, how can it be best attained? 
The child can learn to observe by seeing facts and by 
no other method; he can learn to reason only about 
effects and their cause, about facts and the laws they 
manifest, and he can learn to remember only by repe- 
tition, and this is possible only by the insistent presen- 
tation of facts and laws to his inquiring eyes. To 
nature must we go for facts and laws and repetitions, so 
that education proclaims in no uncertain words that we 
must study nature's facts and laws, and thus corrobo- 
rates the claim I made in the previous chapter. 

A rosier day is dawning for the children of the 
twentieth century. The clergyman is no longer consid- 
ered a paragon of wisdom because he has studied dead 
languages and knows something about theology. The 
rich man is no longer deemed an epitome of business 
sense because he was born to wealth. The great com- 
mon people are fast taking the management of their 
affairs into their own hands, are realizing the needs of 
their offspring better than do their self-constituted 
guardians, and in a blind, groping way are dimly realiz- 
ing that it is essential for their children to know 
things and the living facts about things rather than to 
be familiar with old-world ideas. So kindergartens 



20 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

teach the infant to handle objects that nature makes or 
man has fashioned. Little peeks are made into nature's 
laboratory and man's workshop, and the young minds 
are gradually introduced into this wonderful world, 
which presents to them an ever-changing panorama of 
beauty and delight. There is yet much that is objec- 
tionable in the higher grades, but a workshop is fast be- 
coming a necessity in every well-regulated school ; and 
there the rising generation are taught to make things, 
not that they may thereby learn a trade, but that they 
may be taught to see things exactly as they are, for no 
one can make a fair copy of any object unless he sees 
it as it is, and so there is nothing that can develop the 
observing faculties better than the making of objects. 
Most of our troubles in this life are due to the fact that 
we see things, not as they are, but as we think they are. 
The schools and universities of the future will become 
more and more a combination of a natural history gar- 
den and a workshop. The grip of the dead hand will 
be loosened, and the people who are to live in the twen- 
tieth century will learn the ideas of that century, and 
not those of men who died hundreds and thousands of 
years ago. Living men will be quoted as authorities — 
not those whose bones are moldering in the dust. 

Reader, did you ever change your opinion ? If you 
are like me, you will have done so frequently, and if 
you have ever altered your views, can you swear sol- 



EDUCATION. 21 

emnly that those you now hold are truth? If you feel 
as I do — that you may be wrong — you will fre- 
quently look at your child and wonder if you have any 
right to take his fine, fresh young brain, which belongs 
to him and not to you, and mold it to suit your ideas. 
He must live his own life, not yours; so what right 
have you to curtail his mental freedom? Your duty 
consists in putting living facts of nature in his way that 
he may become familiar with them, and to guide him 
to discover the principles that control them. You must 
remember that practice always precedes theory, and 
that once the child becomes familiar with the practice 
he will soon inquire about the theory. When he asks 
for bread, see that he gets it ; do not give him a stone. 



WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 



CHAPTER III. 

WORK. 

Work has been defined as a curse. I do not believe 
it. Every animal works ; if it did not it would starve, 
for in not one instance does nature provide food for a 
living organism without effort on its part. So work is 
a natural instinct, and to work comes as naturally to a 
human being as does eating. All children work, only 
we call it play. And while they play they are learning 
facts of nature. Everybody has noticed how an infant 
when he drops a toy out of his hand is just as apt to 
look upward in search of it as he is to look downward. 
But after a few such experiences he invariably looks in 
the right direction. He has learned the fact of the law 
of gravity, though he is not aware of having acquired 
any such knowledge. 

He tries to build houses of sand, but they crumble 
to pieces. Some day, however, he finds that moist sand 
is more stable, and he ever afterward applies this 
knowledge and works more industriously. Acciden- 
tally he finds that moist clay is even better, and so he 
makes bricks and gets along famously. He learns 



WORK. 23 

something about the adhesiveness of matter, though the 
name is unknown to him. Once in a while he finds 
some nice flat stones, and since they can be used with- 
out preparation, he prefers them to bricks of his own 
making, and besides, they are better than the latter, as 
they do not crumble to pieces in the sun's rays. He 
thus learns the difference between adhesion and cohe- 
sion, but he could not express the idea in words. I 
could write a long chapter on this stage of a child's 
education and of the hundreds of facts of nature he 
learns, but enough has been said to show that the child 
in natural conditions is learning every minute of the 
day and that his tendency is to at once apply his 
acquired knowledge to the doing of something — in 
fact, to work. 

But — and this is where the fond parent steps in — 
he dirties his face and hands and musses his clothes, 
and is not presentable when a neighbor calls, so he is 
forbidden to learn what nature has to teach him in 
nature's own inimitable way, and " Don't do this " and 
" Don't do that " are dinned incessantly into his ears 
until he learns his new lesson and does nothing. 
Then he is called lazy, especially when he is forced to 
learn something in an unnatural way. Nature is always 
logical, but the poor child's first efforts at work in 
school are usually devoted to wrestling with the ridic- 
ulously illogical and absurd spelling that is supposed to 



24 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR.'' 

represent the sounds of the words in the English lan- 
guage. Naturally the child revolts from it, and so is 
pronounced lazy. 

We teach geography, and think we are educating 
him by cramming into his head cold facts about size, 
height, depth, length and breadth, which would be of 
no practical value to him if he remembered them, which 
he never does. And because he protests against the 
absorption of such matter he is lazy. Try him on the 
living facts of nature, physical geography, and see the 
difference. Show him the action of rain in wearing 
down the surface of the earth, explain how frosts disin- 
tegrate rocks and mountains, let him see how little 
streams form bigger rivers, draw his attention to the 
thousand and one things that are going on right under 
our eyes, but which we never see — teach him the real 
things, not from books but from nature, and at once 
your lazy child becomes an enthusiast. He will work, 
and work hard. In history we teach him dates. If the 
teacher had her way he would leave school with at least 
a thousand pigeonholed in some part of his brain. But 
really does it matter very much if he never knew them ? 
If we just think for a moment it will dawn on us that 
in its simplest terms history is a record of the efforts 
the members of the human race have been making to 
live peacefully with each other. They have tried thou- 
sands of experiments, a few of which have been sue- 



WORK. 25 

cessful, the majority failures, and their experience has 
been tabulated for our guidance, if we care to study it. 
It is worth a vast amount viewed scientifically, and is 
mighty interesting from a more commonplace stand- 
point, but is never considered this way in school. Let 
the teacher make the past alive, not dead, and the child 
will absorb every word and ask for more. 

Do you think children lazy ? Then please step with 
me into the manual instruction room of one of our pro- 
gressive schools and cast your eyes around. I have 
seen as many as a hundred boys in one large room at 
work with tools, and not one lazy boy in the lot. All 
were working as for dear life, for there was much to 
be done and little time in which to do it, so all were 
niggardly of the minutes. No laziness here. Why? 
Because, like the baby with his mud pies, they were 
dealing with facts of nature and learning them. Are 
they working in wood? Then they find it will split 
easier than it can be cut. So they learn about grain. 
Some woods are harder than others, some take a finer 
polish, some bits of the same log are more beautiful 
than others. 

Is it iron they are using? Why, then, they discover 
it is malleable, that it can be bent and twisted, filed and 
turned. Just as fast as the boy learns these facts he 
wants to use them, and so he works, and works enthu- 
siastically. No laziness here. 



26 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

" Let nature be your teacher," we frequently quote, 
and fold our hands complacently and look as if we had 
said something wise. Then we proceed to divorce our 
children from nature as thoroughly as possible in order 
" to equip them for the battle of life " in every waking 
minute of which he will be striving to utilize nature's 
products for the benefit of himself and fellow creatures. 

We have seen the practical part of a manual school, 
now let us look into the theoretical section. In nature, 
practice always precedes theory, but we try to improve 
on nature's ways and teach the theoretical and bar the 
practice. Watch the chemistry class at work, or that 
in physics, mechanics, mathematics, or drawing. Any 
laziness discoverable? None that I could ever see. 
The pupils are studying nature's laws, and are follow- 
ing with zest every experiment that is being carried out. 
The teacher is wise and lets them get their itching 
fingers on the apparatus, and now see how lovingly 
and carefully they handle all the pieces and how enthu- 
siastically they proceed to watch nature's wonderful 
laws working magical changes. Truly no laziness here. 

Ask further regarding such boys, and the teacher 
will tell you that no better and more industrious work- 
men are to be found anywhere than those who have 
gone through such a course, and the manufacturer, 
banker or professional man will speak enthusiastically 
of them as servants. They are intelligent, that is, they 



WORK. 2.7 

recognize the power of law, and no matter in what 
phase of business they may be employed, they look for 
the law, and having got it, apply it. 

But look at the boy who has been " equipped " in 
the standard manner. He has become possessed of a 
certain number of useless facts, and unfortunately, has 
never had suggested to him the idea that law prevails 
everywhere. Things are because they are, and little 
wonder is it, that to him labor is but a means of pro- 
viding so much money to procure certain things he 
wants. There is nothing in his early school training 
to furnish him with interest in the things he sees 
around him, and since he must be doing something, his 
every thought is on amusement. He is frequently lazy 
because his work is uninteresting, but the fault is ours, 
not his. But place this supposedly lazy boy next to 
nature, get him in the primeval condition where he 
must hunt for a living, and the same individual will 
exert himself with pleasure. It may be called play, 
but in reality it is work, and it only shows the wonder- 
ful recuperative power of nature. I have heard true 
happiness denned as consisting of three words — con- 
genial remunerative employment — and I must confess 
I see a world of truth in the idea. 

Work, as I said at the beginning of this chapter, is 
a natural human instinct. True knowledge, that of 
nature's laws, I have tried to show is always converted 



28 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

into labor, and therefore if we wish our children to be 
industrious we must educate them aright. Nature 
must be their teacher ; they must learn nature's facts 
and the laws that govern them. 



INTELLIGENCE. 20, 



CHAPTER IV. 

INTELLIGENCE. 

We say a man is intelligent when he realizes the 
consequences of certain possible actions — in other 
words, he appreciates the force of natural law. 

Of course, certain men are born with a finer sus- 
ceptibility for seeing cause and effect than are others, 
but on the other hand, environment plays a most impor- 
tant part in the development of this faculty. This was 
brought home to me at a very early period of my life 
by the fact that I was in close touch with the work- 
ing classes of Scotland of both town and country. The 
first eighteen years of my life were passed in small 
villages and a second period almost as long in large 
cities. But during the latter period I spent some six 
weeks of every summer in the country, and I simply 
reveled in the society of the common people. I was 
thus able to compare the same class in different sur- 
roundings and I have no hesitation in saying that the 
rural men were infinitely superior in intelligence to 
those in the city. The latter were undoubtedly quicker 
in speech than the former, quicker in reply, quicker in 
superficial smartness, but when it comes to grasping 



30 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

principles, then the former is his superior. Every one 
knows how the green young man from the country with 
but a common-school education finds his way to the 
big city and in but a few years is apt to outdistance the 
city-bred young man with all his supposed better edu- 
cational opportunities. What is the reason ? The fact 
is there ; let us look for the cause. 

Suppose we take a wider view. We have in this 
world civilized races and those that are not. The for- 
mer have thousands of advantages that the latter do 
not possess. The individual civilized nations are vastly 
greater in population than are the individual barbarous 
tribes. They are highly educated while the savage 
probably never saw a book. They possess enormous 
wealth, the others are ignorant of the value of money. 
The one is provided with all the resources of civiliza- 
tion for the slaughter of human beings — rifles, ma- 
chine guns, cannon of diverse descriptions, smokeless 
powder and shrapnell shell — the other has only spears, 
bows and arrows, or possibly antiquated firearms. To 
all appearances, civilized man should be able to subdue 
his savage brother at his own sweet will, but the facts 
are different. Through all history the superior races 
have been trying to conquer the inferior, but the strug- 
gle has not been all one-sided. Rome, by dint of using 
one inferior race against another, not by the arms of 
her own children, conquered most of the then known 



INTELLIGENCE. 3 1 

world, but in the end had to succumb to the children of 
nature, the Goths and Vandals. The wild fanatical 
hordes from Turkestan threatened at one time to over- 
run civilized Europe, and even today the " Sick Man " 
is a thorn in the flesh, and a living insult to the intelli- 
gence of humanity. 

Really, when one comes to consider it, the average 
civilized nation has made but little headway against the 
savage. France for centuries tried to acquire foreign 
possessions with but little success. Italy's recent expe- 
riences in Abyssinia was to her a big disappointment 
and surprise. The only European nation that has been 
successful in subduing savage races is Great Britain, 
but even she has not been without her failures. When 
she meets the white race in primeval surroundings she 
is comparatively helpless. Her children in America 
wrested freedom from her for themselves, while the 
Boer in South Africa, though greatly inferior in num- 
bers, has given her a difficult problem to solve. The 
United States had a foeman worthy of her steel in the 
untutored Indian, and found the white man's diseases 
an efficient ally, more so than his weapon. Even the 
Filipino proved himself no mean foe. Now what is the 
cause of all this? In trying to account for it we use 
a few pet phrases which practically mean nothing. We 
speak of the " wily " savage, his wonderful " mobility," 
that he does not know when he is licked, and his 
3 



2,2 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

astonishing ability to live on a handful of food, and 
so on. 

Let us examine these expressions. Wiliness is a 
mental quality — the ability to throw dust in the eyes 
of an opponent, so to speak, and we have to acknowl- 
edge that the untutored savage, who probably is not 
aware of the fact that he possesses a mind, is able to 
overreach the men who have had their minds put into 
scales and weighed, then developed to the finest pitch 
and nature's supposed deficiencies made good. But the 
child of nature, taught by nature alone, develops a gen- 
eralship at demand that frequently excels the product 
we manufacture in our schools, colleges and military 
academies. He is, to my mind, more intelligent — more 
able to utilize nature's materials — than his book-edu- 
cated opponent. 

What about his mobility? The users of the steam 
engine and the breeders of fine horses confess that the 
people who never saw a locomotive, or possess very 
ordinary horses, can outclass them in running. 

But it is said that they can live on so little, while the 
white man must have a gigantic commissariat. There 
is the rub. An army marches on its stomach, and civi- 
lized stomachs need so much. The savage's stomach is 
more natural, he eats what nature provides for him and 
thus a little suffices for his wants, and that little does 
not need much transportation. Hence his mobility. 



INTELLIGENCE. 33 

Thus we see the child of nature — the man raised 
among hills and plains, where trees grow, flowers 
bloom and birds sing, while the evidence of nature's 
great forces is visible on every hand and the results 
occur so frequently and regularly that he can not but 
observe them — is forced by the very exigencies of his 
existence to study them and to utilize them. Hence he 
is more intelligent, more adaptable than is the man who 
grows up amid a wilderness of stone and lime. The 
latter sees force exerted, but one word explains all — 
machine — so his mind inquires no further. He is 
superficially smart, but he lacks depth ; he is a brightly 
polished tooth in a wheel ; the other has in him greater 
possibilities of making a whole machine, for he has 
learned to appreciate the power of universal, absolute 
law. 

The struggle for existence is today just as keen as 
it ever was, but it is becoming less and less a question 
of physical supremacy, more and more a matter of 
mental superiority. The individuals and nations who 
can develop the highest intelligence, the keenest appre- 
ciation of the forces and laws of nature, who can utilize 
nature's material to supply their needs, will survive. 
To learn about nature we must go to her and not waste 
our precious time with abstract propositions seven 
times removed. 

The same hour that these last lines were written 



34 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

there died, in Chicago, P. D. Armour, one of the 
world's greatest merchants. On one occasion he was 
asked the secret of his success and he replied, " I 
try always to get at the truth, the simple truth, and I 
work." Mr. Armour was not an educated man in the 
ordinary acceptation of the word, that is, he knew little 
about books. But his early days were spent on a farm, 
in his youth he walked to California, and he roughed 
it in the mining fields. He was emphatically an intelli- 
gent man, one who by practical association with nature 
had learned facts and saw the operation of absolute 
law. So in business, although perhaps not able to 
express it in so many words, he knew that law was 
operating there, hence he was aware that if he learned 
to see things as they actually were, he could reason as 
to the consequence from the operation of law on these 
facts. Thus his incessant command to his lieutenants : 
" Tell me the truth, the exact truth." 



DISEASE. 35 



CHAPTER V. 



All animals die either from disease or accident, and 
since all men die, disease must have been contemporary 
with the first of the human race as it will be with the 
last. Very many conceptions have arisen about its 
origin, and a glance at some of them will not be unin- 
teresting. The savage blames its presence to some evil 
spirit, and tries to propitiate him by making offerings 
or worshiping at his shrine. In a more advanced stage 
when he believes the possibility of some of his fellows 
either by great piety or wickedness to have secured 
influence with the unseen spirits he gives them the 
credit or blame, according as he happens to view it. 
The man who is supposed to secure influence with a 
good spirit is a priest, while he who is agent of a bad 
one is a wizard. Both are feared, but since the priest 
is supposed to be able to reward as well as punish, while 
the wizard can only work evil, and that out of spite, it 
naturally follows that while both are dreaded, one is to 
a certain extent reverenced. 

The priest's word is law, and disobedience to his 



36 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

will is punished by the infliction of bodily ailments as 
a means of bringing the sinner to repentance and obedi- 
ence. The wizard is more secret in his working, but 
he equally can bring disease and is willing to do it — 
for a consideration — so whichever way disease comes 
upon poor man it is the work of spirits, either for pun- 
ishment on account of evil doing or for revenge. Even 
among supposedly intelligent people this view of sick- 
ness holds good, and witches, wizards and all that 
genus are devoutly believed in by the population of 
inaccessible mountainous regions of Europe today. 
They are no longer drowned in ponds or burned at the 
stake with the full consent and approbation of the 
Church as they were not so long ago, because the law 
forbids such acts and is certain to view the deed in a 
very prosaic way instead of complimenting the perpe- 
trators on their assiduity in disposing of a servant of 
an evil one. 

As the human race advances intellectually it revolts 
from the idea that a spirit of evil can possibly have 
more power than the good spirit who made the uni- 
verse and so a new theory of disease has to be invented. 
On every hand mankind sees both saint and sinner 
equally affected by its visits. Death is claimed to be 
the wages of sin, but that which produces death is not 
alone confined to the sinner. So the facts were 
accounted for by assuming that the good spirit wished 



DISEASE. 37 

to try the faith of the good, but to punish the bad for 
their wickedness. Here again the priest kept his hold 
on the minds of the populace, for from either point of 
view his services were necessary, as the spirit's special 
deputy on earth to make intervention with his master 
to remove the burden. He was just as essential at the 
bedside of the sick as was the physician, and probably 
for many a long century just as efficacious. 

Among primitive people the doctor is clearly an 
evolution from the wizard, who tries by spells and 
charms to frighten away the spirits who are causing 
the ailment. We laugh at him, but in his day he did 
good work, for he was busy, although he did not know 
it, eliminating error. He proved that cures can not be 
effected by such means, and so he was forced to try 
something else. The whole history of medicine is 
just like that of any other art and science ; it is empir- 
ical, and ;ts progress is attained by trial and error or 
success. Experiments must be made, the results in a 
large majority of cases noted, so that at last the physi- 
cian can decide whether the patient recovers or dies as 
a consequence of the use of the medicine or in spite 
of it. Every new theory advanced is most strenuously 
resisted, and at first it must be confessed they are cer- 
tain to be not only complicated but fantastic. Each 
one advanced but paves the way to another, simpler and 
more reasonable, until at length we begin to get theories 



38 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

that will square with the actual facts, and the art can 
be applied with intelligence. 

Medicine has now largely shaken off the past. Men 
are no longer quoted as authorities because they lived 
a thousand years ago; in fact, the tendency is more 
toward seizing the most recent ideas because they are 
new. But this is a pardonable fault, for out of the con- 
flict of theories truth ultimately arises, and, as I said 
before, mankind moves toward truth by experiment. 

Medicine has emphatically disproved the idea that 
disease is sent by the machinations of evil spirits or 
wizards to our hurt, or that it is bestowed on us by a 
loving spirit to chasten us for our sins, or try our 
faith if we are good. It has proved that most of the 
ills that flesh is heir to are due to the presence of bac- 
teria that are harmful to man, just as some of them are 
beneficial if not indispensable to his welfare. So when 
sickness attacks us we no longer ponder what offences 
we may have committed, or what lesson it is our duty 
to learn, but instead we endeavor to discover where we 
got the contagion, so that the source may be removed 
to prevent spread of the disease. 

We now know that decaying organic matter, espe- 
cially our own excreta, is the finest nursery that can 
be devised for the propagation of disease germs. Na- 
ture warns us of the fact by making its smell exceed- 
ingly objectionable, but the human race is apt to neglect 



DISEASE. 39 

nature's warnings persistently, and consequently to dull 
the senses that warn us of danger. But dire experience 
has taught us a sharp lesson, and so sanitation has 
become a vital question among all civilized peoples. 
Among primitive races the little they know about sani- 
tation has crystallized into religious observances, and 
so, especially in hot climates, the ablution of the exter- 
nal orifices and the burying of excreta is made obliga- 
tory by religious ordinance. 

With the growth of large cities the subject pre- 
sented a new phase. The crowded condition of the 
community prevented the burying of all decaying or- 
ganic matter, and the great accumulations of it on the 
streets were not only a continual offense to the sense 
of smell, but a perpetual breeding-place for disease 
germs. It is little wonder that, even so recently as the 
beginning of the nineteenth century, various epidemics 
swept over civilized Europe again and again like a 
scourge, and that the death rate in even ordinary times 
was very high, in some cases about double what it is 
today. 

At length men were driven to the conclusion that 
certain epidemics were due not to the visitation of 
God but to the foetid rubbish heaps of their own mak- 
ing. True knowledge is always converted into work, 
and so the rubbish heaps were removed. By and by 
there was a step in advance and sewer pipes were laid 



4-0 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

in the streets to convey the sewage outside of the city. 
Since a river would carry it still further, the pipes 
wherever possible found their exit in a stream, and 
soon all running waters near big cities were trans- 
formed into little more than currents of putrid, offen- 
sive matter. 

Then came the germ theory of disease and every 
effort was made to find destroyers for them. This 
accomplished, soon every well-regulated family pos- 
sessed itself of a stock of disinfectants and used them 
freely. Disease was to be vanquished in this fashion, 
so a feeling of security reigned. While the idea was 
a good one, it was only half a truth, for since people 
believed they had killed the germs, they were apt to 
be careless about the removal of the matter. So in due 
process of time it was learned that cleanliness was just 
as important as the use of germicides. Each is good, 
but both are better. 

In recent years we have learned that while some 
germs are harmful to man, there are many others whose 
existence is as essential to his welfare, for it is their 
work to resolve dead organic matter into its component 
elements. Were no such agency at work this world 
would soon be a gigantic rubbish heap, where life of 
any kind would be impossible. With a clear apprecia- 
tion of nature's mode of working, we are no longer 
in sanitation and medicine endeavoring to oppose her, 



DISEASE. 41 

but sensibly trying to make it easy for her to accom- 
plish her purpose. 

Disease teaches us, then, that true knowledge — that 
of nature's facts and nature's laws — is life, while igno- 
rance is death. In civilized communities in the past 
century the study of nature has resulted in adding a 
dozen years to the average duration of life. Disease, 
then, may truthfully be called "the penalty that man has 
to pay for lack of knowledge either on his part or on 
that of his fellows. This fact leads to some rather 
startling and far-reaching conclusions, but as they 
are more or less related to the subject to be discussed 
in the next chapter I will postpone their consideration 
until then. 



42 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 



CHAPTER VI. 



War is hell, and when we consider the millions of 
fine young lives, the finest specimens of physical man- 
hood of the nation, the wide-reaching misery falling 
upon parents, wives and little ones deprived of their 
breadwinner and natural protector, the vast amount of 
treasure military operations require, the awful loss to 
production entailed by a standing army in times of 
peace — when we consider these things we can call it 
by no other name, for it is the most awful calamity that 
can apparently fall upon a nation. Little wonder is it 
that mankind dreams of a time still future when war 
shall be no more, when the millennium or thousand 
years of peace shall permit them to make their swords 
into plowshares and their spears into pruning-hooks. 
Efforts to secure universal peace have been made again 
and again, but the net result today is that Europe is 
one armed camp, while the United States has been 
forced to depart from her old traditions and to quad- 
ruple her standing army. 

It is evident that the millennium is not at our door, 



war. 43 

and much as we like to see conditions different from 
what now obtain, all we can do is to inquire into the 
cause of so much strife and bloodshed, and if we can 
discover that, then we may in part at least remove the 
effect. 

I remember once being completely floored by a 
doctor telling me that a person rarely died of the disease 
that supposedly killed him ; but with experience of 
death I learned that while the principal disease lowered 
the tone of the system and upset the functions of the 
various organs, the immediate cause of death was some 
secondary ailment, such as bronchitis. So the osten- 
sible cause of war between two nations is rarely if ever 
the real one. Behind it, possibly extending back 
for years, may be a host of other matters, and the last 
incident may be the spark that sets the powder on fire 
or provides the excuse that was wanted. 

The most fruitful cause of warfare is, I believe, 
the development of new ideas, and the extraordinary 
repugnance of humanity to accept them. No truer 
statement was ever uttered than this, " The greatest 
pain in the world is the pain of a new idea," and while 
human beings individually sigh for variety in things 
and scenes, they resent collectively the introduction 
of a new idea. I account for this peculiarity by the 
belief that man is intellectually lazy as a consequence 
of his education, his mind at an early stage being 



44 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

burdened with a lot of dead facts and fancies that dull 
rather than sharpen his reasoning faculties. The most 
important of man's interests is religion, and therefore 
we find the vast majority of wars have religion as their 
primary cause. The priest is naturally a laggard. 
Mundane comfort has little interest for him, as all this 
world is but a fleeting show where men are drilled, 
frequently rather roughly, to prepare them to enlist in 
the great army in the next world. All that he wants 
is that his charge should live up to the standard of 
moral ethics and dogmas that he has received from his 
prophet, and all will be well. All that is worth knowing 
is to be found in his book of revelations, and conse- 
quently further knowledge must have its origin in the 
evil one, for if it were for man's good to know it, the 
prophet would have revealed it. 

When, therefore, a new prophet arises with a new 
system of ethics, or even a slight change on an existing 
one, there is instant warfare — at first between small 
bodies, but, if the philosophy make headway, then it 
will embroil nations. The dungeon and the stake are 
sufficient for the few, but the sword is necessary for the 
many. So religion sets brother against brother, com- 
munity against community, nation against nation, race 
against race, and in the name of the Creator, whom 
they proclaim to be all good, all powerful and full of 
loving kindness, men burn each other at the stake and 



war. 45 

slaughter each other on the battlefield. All profess to 
be seeking the same goal, many seek to enter by the 
same gate, but one and all object to any one marching 
along a different road, even though it be parallel with 
their own and but a little distance away. Racial hatred 
is a terrible thing, but religious hatred is a thousand 
times worse, and while religion claims to be anxious to 
make a heaven of this earth, it has, alas, too often made 
it a hell. 

The Israelite proceeded to exterminate every inhab- 
itant in the land of Canaan because they worshiped 
a different God. The Mohammedan in the day of his 
power gave the conquered the choice of the Koran or 
death. Christianity claims to have been propagated 
by peaceful means, but this is pure myth, for it is on 
record a hundred times that the conquered demanded 
the acceptance of that religion as part of the terms of 
surrender. The Papacy, in the heyday of its power, 
flung armies wantonly in the field to increase its dom- 
ination still further. The Reformation was attained 
only after prolonged strife and today the line of demar- 
cation in Europe is practically a religious one, Protes- 
tantism on the one side and Catholicism, Roman and 
Greek, on the other. 

The most conservative figure in Europe is the Turk, 
holding fast to the supernatural and refusing all knowl- 
edge of the natural. The Christian dogs of war snap 



46 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

and snarl at the foot that rests on this side of the Dar- 
danelles, and once in a while they seize a mouthful. 
He knows his fate, but faces every foe, believing that 
while he may suffer worldly loss here, he will receive 
high honor in Paradise for every drop of Christian 
blood he sheds. 

How do we today account for all this terrible blood- 
shed in the past between different religions ? We shake 
our heads sadly over the facts and blame it all on 
ignorance. We now proclaim on the housetops that a 
man's religion is nobody's business but his own, but 
oceans of blood had been shed before a small portion of 
mankind accepted the doctrine that a man's thoughts 
ought to be as free as the winds. Even the Pilgrim 
Fathers who migrated to a new world to get freedom 
to worship God in their own way considered that this 
liberty empowered them to compel all others to do as 
they did. 

The end is not yet. The Anglo-Saxon proclaims 
himself the highest type of the human race because he 
is so thoroughly imbued with the spirit of freedom, and 
he is most assiduous in sending out missionaries to 
every land, where they force themselves into all cor- 
ners and try to convert the natives to their views. Of 
course, the native priests resent them, for they are as 
other priests ; violence ensues, international compli- 
cations result and war follows. The missionary com- 



war. 47 

placently folds his hands and bewails the ignorance of 
the poor natives. 

Yes,, it is ignorance that is the cause of all religious 
wars, and the more we learn the more broad-minded 
we become, the more tolerant of others' ideas. Unfor- 
tunately, a nation that knows can be dragged into war 
by one that does not. For instance, the ignorance of 
Spain as to how colonies should be governed embroiled 
the United States into war with her over Cuba, so that 
the latter's knowledge counted for nothing. The Boers 
in the Transvaal organized themselves into a nation, 
but were ignorant of one elementary principle that all 
other civilized nations from the days of the Israelites 
until now have followed — to deal with the stranger 
within their gates as they would with one of themselves. 
They violated this principle, which experience has 
proved to be good, and the consequence was that they 
got into war with Great Britain, who has known its 
value for centuries. 

One of the oldest and most erroneous ideas of 
humanity is that which permitted man to own his fel- 
low. The early settlers in the United States followed 
the example, and provided material for one of the most 
awful conflagrations the world ever saw. 

Another fruitful cause of war is the desire of one 
body of people to possess the territory of others. With 
the consolidation of kingdoms, either by conquest or by 
4 



48 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

the marriage of sovereigns, that has been so frequent 
in Europe during the past century, this has ceased to 
be as powerful a factor now as it once was, but still 
the law is supreme that a nation will hold its territory 
just as long as it can resist the invader. Nations rise 
and fall, and the conqueror in one age becomes the 
quarry in the one succeeding. The decline of every 
decadent nation has been considered by the historian, 
and in every instance the verdict is, that they were igno- 
rant of the effects of certain causes which they them- 
selves brought into existence. One and all lagged 
behind in the mental development of the human race. 
Some other nation, generally by dint of hard experience 
on uncongenial soil, had solved certain important prob- 
lems of nature, such as the utilizing of her material 
resources, and this gives it a big advantage in warfare, 
while the mental processes that made possible the utili- 
zation of such resources enable this race to handle 
effectively the weapons it has devised. A striking 
illustration of this is found in the Anglo-Saxon and 
Teutonic races, who are, when one considers the facts 
calmly, the only ones that can invent, make and handle 
machinery. This one fact alone is sufficient to account 
for their all-conquering history, for it enables them to 
wrest from nature her finest products and use them to 
build up a physically and mentally strong people. 

I might enlarge on this idea almost indefinitely, but 



war. 49 

I think I have said enough to show that war is the 
outcome of ignorance and that rivers of blood must 
flow before error can be eliminated and an elementary 
truth be accepted. 

War, then, is a terrible penalty for lack of knowl- 
edge, and is thus closely allied to disease and personal 
discomfort. If I were to generalize on the conclusions 
to which the reasoning has led, I would say that the 
penalty of ignorance is discomfort and discontent to 
the individual, disease and unhappiness to humanity in 
groups, war and misery to humanity in the mass. 

I have shown how discomfort and disease are excel- 
lent educators, but they are far outdistanced by war. 
The issues at stake are so gigantic, the present dangers 
so imminent, that the wits of every one are working 
at the highest pitch. Deficiencies of weapons, of trans- 
port, of food supplies and of medical needs are 
promptly noticed, and the memory of them after the 
campaign is very persistent. Experiments are entered 
upon to learn more about physical facts so that in 
future struggles the fighters may have the very best 
that the ingenuity of man can devise. Our present 
knowledge of the strength of materials, of mechanics, 
of many departments of chemistry, of food, of medi- 
cine and sanitation, of stable ship-building, of housing 
and of many other arts and sciences are largely owing 
to the investigations of the finest brains working in 



50 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

government laboratories. The physical facts discov- 
ered by the soldier become the property of the civilian, 
and he quickly utilizes them in forwarding the arts of 
peace. Thus in modern times, we find martial nations 
are also manufacturing ones ; the successful Anglo- 
Saxon and Teuton on the field of battle are also fore- 
most in the practical arts of peace. 

It has frequently been remarked the wonderful 
recovery that many nations make from an exhausting 
campaign. Look at the astonishing advances made by 
Great Britain after the struggle with Napoleon, after 
the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny. Prussia 
was an almost negligible factor in Europe until after 
the Seven Years' War, while after the Franco-German 
struggle she developed into a strong rival of Great 
Britain as a manufacturing nation. Even France, the 
conquered, surprised Europe by the rapidity with which 
she paid the indemnity of the vanquished and resumed 
her place in the front rank of powers. Had she been 
less in the grip of the religious dogma that prevented 
the absorption of scientific data she might have been 
as successful as her rival, Germany. The United States 
seemed to have committed national suicide with her 
long internecine struggle, but in little more than thirty 
years she paid the cost of the campaign and rushed into 
the very forefront of nations, numerically, financially 
and industrially. 



WAR. 51 

On the other hand, races so confined by religious 
beliefs that all modern ideas are deemed alluring de- 
vices of the evil one, slip backward after every war. The 
living instances of this are Spain, Italy, Austria, Greece 
and Turkey. Russia is the most aggressive power in 
the world today, though her people are dominated by 
the Greek Church. But her expansion is at the expense 
of inferior races, her defense is her vastness and inac- 
cessibility. Her military debts are a grievous burden, 
unlike that of Protestant nations who bear theirs with 
greater ease. The head of her Church is also the head 
of her army, and military exigencies press him too hard 
to permit mistaken ideas to stand in the way. 

The most noteworthy instance in history of a nation 
avoiding war is China, who, building a huge wall 
around her borders, made invasion for two thousand 
years impossible. When she performed this wonderful 
task she was probably the most advanced nation in the 
world ; but freedom from attack, instead of resulting 
in great progress in learning, industry and art, had a 
contrary effect, for everything crystallized as it was 
then. She is now so backward that she floats, a gigan- 
tic carcass, on the stream of time, the jest and the 
terror of the rest of the world. The day of her awak- 
ening has come ; once again will she be born into the 
kingdom of knowledge, and a deluge of blood will be 
her baptism. 



52 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

It is now time for me to redeem the promise I made 
at the end of the last chapter that I would draw atten- 
tion to some interesting conclusions that followed as a 
corollary the train of reasoning we have been pursuing. 
Disease, I there showed, proved that knowledge is life 
and ignorance is death. War adds its testimony to the 
same doctrine. It follows, then, if all life were pos- 
sessed of perfect knowledge there would be no death — 
life would be eternal. But such universal knowledge 
is manifestly impossible ; so, therefore, man is doomed 
to struggle with discomfort, disease and war through 
all his generations. If any part of him is fated to dive 
forever, by the same reasoning, it must possess univer- 
sal knowledge or must always have existed; but this 
is beyond human power to prove or disprove, and so 
I must leave the subject. 

Mankind has dreams of two golden ages, one past 
and the other future. In the first, man was perfect and 
intended to live forever, but he was tempted and fell 
from his high estate. Desire to know was the cause of 
his downfall, but we have just seen that ignorance is 
death while perfect knowledge is life eternal; there- 
fore, increase of knowledge could not bring death into 
the world, while a being fated to eternal life must have 
known everything and consequently could not add to 
his stock. 

The golden age in the future is when war shall be 



war. 53 

no more ; when, during the glorious millennium, there 
shall be a thousand years of peace. I am sorry to dis- 
pel such fond delusion, but it can never be. For while 
even a little remains unknown to man war will be one 
of his severest castigators for ignorance, and perhaps 
most persistent educator, compelling him to study the 
facts of nature and the laws that govern them. 



54 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 



CHAPTER VII. 

COMMERCE. 

Commerce refers to the exchange of commodities, 
and this postulates the idea of private ownership of 
property. I am inclined to believe that the nucleus of 
human society was the tribe, not the family as we are 
apt to suppose, the members being compelled to asso- 
ciate for purposes of defense against the lower animals, 
and that each individual was born into the community, 
for when promiscuous intercourse was the rule, as it 
surely is in the primitive stage, no individual but the 
mother could be held responsible for the support of the 
young, and she being frequently unfit for the task, all 
food procured by the men would necessarily become the 
common property of the community. Communism, 
then, in its simplest form, must be the primal condi- 
tion of human society, each providing according to his 
ability, each receiving according to his needs. 

When then did the first departure take place? My 
consideration of this proposition tends to the belief 
that man's first property, recognized by others as such, 
would be the possession of a female all to himself, the 



COMMERCE. 55 

outcome of the experience that free love led to quar- 
reling and murder, the tribe thus being deprived of its 
providers and defenders. Such a departure must have 
been governed by the operation of some definite law, 
and this we find in the law of least effort which 
demands the elimination of economic waste. It was in 
operation the instant life appeared on this earth, com- 
pelling the simpler forms to differentiate in their feed- 
ing so that all organic matter would be consumed. It 
is great economic waste to raise a human being from 
infancy to maturity and then have his life needlessly 
destroyed. It is wise to keep the workings of this law 
well in mind, as it determines remorselessly vast com- 
mercial and ethical developments in human affairs. 

But possession brings responsibility, and so in due 
course of time each male became responsible for pro- 
viding food and shelter for his mate and their offspring. 
The exigencies of the family demanded private owner- 
ship of property, and this followed as inexorably as 
fate. The change would be a gradual one, an evolution 
from one condition into another, one class of articles 
after another being transferred from the communistic 
class to that of private ownership. The less perishable 
articles would naturally be first, such as weapons, tools 
and shelters, while perishable commodities like foods 
would be for long common property. But increase in 
numbers, such as would naturally follow a system of 



56 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

conduct less liable to the propagation of disease, would 
tend to specialization of pursuit, one man being better 
fitted for hunting, another for making the necessary 
weapons, etc., and so an exchange of commodities 
became necessary. This would be conducted on a very 
elementary basis at first, the one getting what he needed 
in return for what the other wanted, without reference 
to the time, effort or skill required in the production. 

This is commerce in its simplest form, but even 
here its operations are just as much under the law of 
supply and demand as in the complicated form we see 
today, and while ignorance might never dream of its 
existence, it was at work, forcing man to move forward 
on the line of his destiny. For in due course of time 
the individual who learned how to make flint hatchets 
that would do better work and last longer than sand- 
stone ones, also found they took longer to make, and 
so he demanded more of the hunter's product in pay- 
ment. The latter, finding the new weapon more effi- 
cient, had to have it, and thus the demand being ahead 
of the supply, the price of hatchets went up, and 
remained so until a sufficient number of new workers 
had learned the new process of manufacturing, and 
then hatchets fell in price. The production of a new 
commodity has far-reaching effects that very few men 
realize, and it is apt to affect many lines of business 
that seem to have no relationship to it. And so every 



COMMERCE. 57 

little improvement, even in primitive times, changed 
materially methods of working and modes of living. 
A man's wants are almost invariably ahead of his 
income ; had he but a little more he would be perfectly 
contented, but the gratification of a want makes it a 
need, and it in turn creates new wants. So the tendency 
is toward greater complexity in living and simplifica- 
tion of employment, each man becoming more and more 
of a specialist. 

The multiplicity of articles manufactured in due 
course of time evolves the merchant, who acts as agent 
for both manufacturer and buyer. He gives the pro- 
ducer less for his goods than the latter would get from 
the consumer, and the last must pay more for them 
than if he bought direct. But it pays both to deal 
through the agent, as he is a timesaver, for each would 
necessarily waste much valuable time looking for the 
other. There is nothing in nature to tell a man how 
to buy and how to sell ; experience is the only teacher, 
and we readily fancy that the first merchants made a 
sorry mess of their business ventures. But bit by bit 
the experience gained became tabulated, so to speak, 
and working principles were evolved. Here is the 
beginning of the science of Political Economy, and its 
first rule is very simple: Honesty is the best policy. 
Well, I wonder how many thousand years passed ere 
business experience taught men that axiom. 



58 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

With the increase in the multiplicity of commodi- 
ties, and the varying wants of the consumers, barter 
would become more and more an impossibility, and at 
length the value of each article would be referred to 
some special object known to every one as a standard. 
This we know to have actually happened, and shells, 
beads, cows, etc., have been used as measurements of 
value or money. But they were cumbrous things to 
move around, and ultimately some article well known, 
desirable and portable was adopted. In some cases it 
was copper, some silver, some gold, but the latter is 
now in common use in all civilized communities, and 
the natural conclusion is that it is the fittest standard, 
since it has survived. 

Commerce, as has been said, is the exchange of 
commodities, and I often wonder how the idea could 
originate that restrictions of trade were good for it. 
As travel extended, one community came to know of 
another's existence and also of the goods they produced. 
The one naturally wanted to exchange commodities 
with the other, but I suppose some merchants feared 
the competition and were able to convince the members 
of their own community that commerce was the 
exchange of goods for money, which it is not, and 
they could not buy from the local producers unless 
barriers were set up. In their own interest the latter 
must protect the former and they did. But it is really 



COMMERCE. 59 

a case of beggar my neighbor all round, and there is 
little profit in it. It is another illustration of trying to 
outwit nature's law of the struggle for existence, and 
sooner or later we find it to be in active operation, and 
the balance sheet is not as pleasing as we expected it 
to be. Let us see the effect of a prohibitive tariff. It 
means big profits to the manufacturer, but big mone- 
tary success invites competition, and he gets it. Too 
many enter into the field and the consequence is that 
profits vanish, not infrequently become converted into 
losses. The latter condition is worse than the first, 
and at length to avoid financial death, they try the 
effect of combination so as to head off competition. 

It is rather interesting these days to note for a 
moment an effort that is being made to avoid competi- 
tion in another way. Centuries ago the English Parlia- 
ment fixed the price of the most important commodities 
by one of its acts, and visited with awful penalties any 
infringement of the law on one side or the other. But 
Act of Parliament notwithstanding, the law of supply 
and demand ruled with an absolute power as before, 
and the human law became obsolete. Again, Mr. W. E. 
Gladstone, in proposing to fix the rents of Irish ten- 
ants for fourteen years by Act of Parliament, boast- 
ingly said that he would throw the laws of Political 
Economy to Saturn. He ought to have known better, 
and must have felt rather humble a few years later 



60 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

when he had to concede a further reduction on the 
rents fixed by his law. It is utterly impossible by Act 
of Parliament, Act of Congress, or any other means 
to fix prices that will endure for any length of time, and 
had a few of our leading politicians had a schoolboy's 
acquaintance with English history they would have 
been warned by England's experience and never pro- 
pounded the scheme that distracted this country for 
eight weary years. It is the old story; incidents and 
events alone teach the unthinking, and these must be 
so frequently repeated that they impress themselves 
upon the memory of the individual. Occasional expe- 
riences are known only to the student, and he is laughed 
at by the demagogue on the stump. 

But other factors are also at force, for the law 
demanding the elimination of economic waste is work- 
ing in the same direction. It is more economical for 
two men to work under one roof than for them to 
operate under two, so partnerships are formed. This 
in turn tends to great elaboration in details, and there- 
fore more capital is necessary in the business, so that it 
becomes harder for the average man to start, and he is 
compelled to sell his labor to those established. There 
is but one limit to this consolidation of interests, and 
that is when only one corporation owns all the business 
interests in a country, although we can hardly fancy 
such a possibility — still it is the logical conclusion. 



COMMERCE. 6l 

We are apparently moving rapidly toward some 
such goal, and the most characteristic feature of the 
end of last century was the remarkable concentration 
of capital into gigantic combinations popularly known 
as trusts, their aim being to lessen the cost of produc- 
tion, that is, the elimination of economic waste. 

The trust is the modern form of monopoly. The 
latter held its ground for many a long year, but it out- 
lived its time. The trust will not last forever ; it is 
merely a transition to something else, and the point that 
is bothering most thinking men is, what will that some- 
thing be? When we come to the consideration of 
morality, we may find the answer. 

While discussing special privileges, I may refer in 
a few words to the extreme case of land, which at first 
glance may not appear to be in any way connected with 
trading. But all our commodities have their origin in 
the soil, and land therefore is a very fundamental factor 
in commerce. We can easily conceive how private 
ownership in land arose. When population was small 
and consequently soil was in excess of man's needs, 
each would locate himself wherever it suited him. His 
descendants kept on using it until possession became 
recognized as ownership in that family, and by and by 
was subdivided among them. Then when population 
increased and demand for land arose that could not 
be supplied by nature, the recognized owners exacted 



62 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

a price for the privilege of using- it. Value of land is 
practically determined by density of population, and 
so as the human family increases in numbers, the 
greater a price must they pay for permission to use the 
soil. This is a special privilege of the extremest kind, 
and apparently a successful one, a complete outwitting 
of nature's law. Is it? Let us see. The land on 
which Chicago is built was bought from the natives for 
less than a cent an acre. Today it would be hard to 
compute the value of that actually in use, but it must 
amount to an enormous sum. Here is an immense 
profit that the community has earned and put into the 
pockets of a few individuals, and seemingly the land- 
owner has the best of the bargain. But let us have a 
good square look at the landowners in the mass and 
learn whether or not they are all getting rich. For 
many miles around Chicago all land is divided into lots 
and practically has been so for many long years. It 
is absolutely worthless as a producing factor to the 
community, and many of the individual members 
thereof are big losers in time and money by being com- 
pelled to travel for long distances past the vacant land 
because the owner is holding it for a big price. But 
consider the ridiculous hopes of the owners of these 
lots. They seemingly do not realize that the subdi- 
vided ground, if built upon, would house a population 
many times in excess of Chicago's present population, 



COMMERCE. 63 

and that the probabilities of their particular lot of prop- 
erty being wanted in the next half century is not one 
in a hundred. So if they will but figure up the original 
cost of their lot, the compound interest on the same, 
the taxes of all kinds they have paid, I am afraid the 
average man will find himself decidedly the loser. In 
plain English, far more money is lost in landowner- 
ship than is made in it, and since the laws of political 
economy all work toward the elimination of economic 
waste, it is only a question of time when private owner- 
ship in land shall cease and determine. In the mean- 
time its existence is utilized by nature as an efficient 
teacher of the principles of political economy, but her 
education fees are pretty high, and she sees they are 
promptly paid. Every twenty years or so she makes 
a special levy and the collector stands by us until we 
pay up. Each time he calls we put on our thinking cap 
and as a community learn a little more than we knew 
before, and possibly some day our education will be so 
far advanced that we will know something, and then 
our knowledge will be converted into work. 

Let us see the influence of these facts on the mind 
of mankind. The captains of industry are mighty 
geniuses in their way. They have learned facts in a 
hard school, and by their blind appreciation of the 
power of certain laws have accomplished some ex- 
traordinary transformations. Not one of them ever 
5 



64 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

dreamed of creating a condition of his affairs that 
was to be largely beyond his own control, but the 
gigantic scope of their enterprises demands the help 
of efficient lieutenants. 

" Really good brains are scarce," says the capitalist, 
" but I must have them," and in the effort to get them, 
all men must be educated, and educated right. The 
successful organizer of a big corporation remembers 
how valuable it was to him to know all the details of his 
business from actual experience and so he insists that 
all his help shall begin at the bottom of the ladder. 
One and all get facts rubbed into them until the power 
of generalizing is developed. The youth with the 
soundest school education advances fastest, and so 
work at school is more thorough and more practical 
every year. One no longer talks of mental culture in 
connection with school life, but the developing of the 
powers of observation and the reasoning faculties. 
We want our youth to see things as they really are, 
and to appreciate the cause behind the fact, so that 
they may be able to make their living in a world of 
facts that exist through, and are modified by, the oper- 
ation of absolute law. In many ways business is a 
pocket edition of nature. It is a desperate struggle for 
existence, with the survival of the fittest; hence the 
common phrase, "There is no philanthropy in busi- 
ness," is a picturesque description of nature's law. 



COMMERCE. 65 

Ministers preach about the introduction of religion into 
business, but their ideals would not run a factory or 
store a month before it would go into bankruptcy. The 
average business man must have in business circles a 
name above suspicion, no matter his creed or want of 
one, otherwise he goes to the wall sooner or later. 
Between man and man he must be just, but the moment 
he tries to become generous he infringes a law of nature 
and must pay the penalty. He must continually 
endeavor to supply the same goods at a lower price, or 
better goods at the old price, and to obtain this end 
he must secure higher skilled labor and better machin- 
ery. So his incessant cry is: Educate, educate, edu- 
cate, and no more efficient drill sergeant did Mother 
Nature ever evolve than the business man of today. 
Truly, he compels men to learn nature's facts and the 
laws that govern them. 



66 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR 



CHAPTER VIII. 

MORALITY. 

Perhaps there is no phase of human interest that is 
more in the thoughts of most people, especially in civi- 
lized communities, than that of morality. The average 
parent is ever on the lookout to note a child's deviation 
from what he considers to be the true path, and the 
wandering one is at once forced to return either by 
moral suasion or possibly sterner means. 

Morality may be defined generally as behavior 
according to a code of ethics which may be called the 
moral law. Such a code forms the basis of all relig- 
ions, and while it agrees in many points with common 
and statute law it also differs from it especially in strin- 
gency, and takes cognizance of matters that are abso- 
lutely beyond the control of the latter; for instance, 
the Hebrew moral law forbids covetousness, but the 
difficulty of proving such an offense would alone for- 
bid its introduction into any legislative code. 

Again, while there are many moral codes in exist- 
ence, all of them claiming, more or less, a divine origin, 
no two of them agree in details. Thus the Hindoo is 



MORALITY. 67 

forbidden to eat flesh, the Mohammedan to indulge in 
spirituous liquors, the Israelite to eat pork, the Chris- 
tian to have more than one wife at a time, while the 
Mormon is urged to take as many as possible. Even 
the races who believe in the same religion have differ- 
ent standards. The Scotchman, until a few years ago, 
took his Sabbath very seriously, and any attempt at 
even such mild recreation as a short walk on that day 
was sternly frowned upon, while his continental fel- 
low Christian looks upon Sunday as a day especially 
set apart for recreation and amusement. So that 
morality depends very largely upon latitude and longi- 
tude and the year of the calendar. Moore puts this 
idea very neatly, when he says : 

" I find the Doctors and the Sages 
Have differed in all climes and ages, 
And two in fifty scarce agree 
On what is pure morality." 

We can readily understand that in his most primi- 
tive condition man would act toward his fellow men 
exactly as he felt like doing, restrained solely by their 
behavior under the influence of similar impulses. The 
primal condition of society, as I have tried to show, was 
probably communistic, everything being for the use of 
all. Each added the results of his efforts to the com- 
mon pile, and took from it what suited him best. His 
wants were few, being confined to such fruits as grew 



68 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

wild and such game as he could easily secure. Like all 
other life he was under the domination of the law of 
least effort, which demands the elimination of economic 
waste — that is, securing the greatest amount of return 
in exchange for the smallest amount of exertion. This 
produces cooperation, that is, the specializing of indus- 
trial effort. Each individual thus becomes more valu- 
able to the community, and it must use every means to 
keep him in health and vigor. I have shown that in all 
probability the idea of private ownership of property 
began with the allotment of a female to each male in 
order to avoid as much as possible fighting among the 
men. This is the beginning of restriction of conduct 
and others follow in natural sequence. It would almost 
appear then that morality is the outcome of expediency, 
but I think I can perceive a stronger influence at work. 
Let us see if we can not picture an elementary con- 
dition of affairs where we can get rapid evolution. 
Let us suppose that on some large uninhabited island 
there has by some untoward fate been thrown a couple 
of boys, say twelve years of age. They are on different 
parts of it, and are unaware of each other's existence. 
Each has to secure a living as best he can, helping 
himself to such of nature's products as are accessible 
and suitable. Each is absolutely unrestricted in his 
conduct, for there is no one to say yea or nay to any 
act he may wish to do. Viewed from a strictly matter- 



MORALITY. 69 

of-fact human standpoint, can either of these boys be 
immoral in his conduct? He can not possibly commit 
any offense against his neighbor, for he has not got one, 
and so we must consider him as being in a neutral con- 
dition. When they have attained manhood or even 
middle age, by which time their early training has 
become dulled and the habit of doing exactly as they 
pleased has become decidedly developed, we will sup- 
pose some event throws them together. The social 
instinct determines them to companionship, and the 
interesting problem arises, will they be the better or 
the worse for each other's company ? It will all depend 
upon their conduct. Each has been in the habit of help- 
ing himself to whatever he fancied, and will continue 
to do so. One may be expert in fishing, the other in 
hunting; one may be able to get all he thinks needful 
in a few hours, the other may take a whole day. Sooner 
or later, therefore, we can fancy each will begin to 
think that he does all the work, while the other gets all 
the benefit. Each as a consequence will exert himself 
less, so that the condition of each is worse than before 
they met. Wrangling will ensue, and peace will only 
be secured by an arrangement being made that what- 
ever each secures by his exertions shall belong to him, 
and that the other can get it only by exchanging some- 
thing mutually satisfactory. The result of adhering 
to this agreement will be that each will specialize in 



JO WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

his labor, and the material and mental condition of 
each will be vastly improved. 

I might enlarge on this idea by supposing that a 
couple of females is added to the group, and then pic- 
ture how quarreling and fighting would arise as each 
sought the companionship of one or the other, as the 
whim happened to be. We can fancy how in one of 
their struggles one injured the other sufficiently to 
make him helpless for weeks, and how the one would 
have to bear the recriminations of the other three, and 
at the same time have to work harder to supply the 
wants of all. He had gained his point, but might be 
apt to consider he had paid too high a price, and so 
the men would have to come to an agreement to limit 
their attentions to only one of the opposite sex. 

This little fancy sketch provides us with material 
that may enable us to attain a clear definition. Argu- 
ing from these premises I would say: Morality is 
the product of cooperation, and consists in the sur- 
render by the individual to the community of certain 
natural rights, in exchange for which he is guaranteed 
the satisfaction of corresponding desires with more 
certainty and with less risk of injury, either by acci- 
dent or disease. 

If this conception of what constitutes morality be 
correct it will stand whatever tests we apply to it on 
broad lines. Thus the more complex our cooperation 



MORALITY. 71 

becomes, the more stringent will be the demands of 
morality; that is, the more rights will the individual 
have to surrender, but the more will be guaranteed to 
him. We find this to be true. The great manufactur- 
ing nations are more moral both in ideal and in actual 
conduct than are those where labor is less highly spe- 
cialized, while the very lowest moral type is that of the 
untutored savage where communism of effort and own- 
ership largely prevails. We can now account for the 
gross immorality of the mining camp, where each man 
is an unattached atom dependent on himself alone, and 
then explain the better conduct of the community when 
the capitalist secures control of the region and special- 
izes the labor. We can now understand why the negro 
of the South, the unskilled laborer of the slums, and 
the idle son of the rich man are equally apt to be below 
the standard of the rest of the community in their 
behavior; it is because neither is sufficiently involved 
in the general cooperation. No need to question now 
why so many of the heroes taken care of in our old sol- 
diers' homes grieve by their conduct those who wish to 
see them end their days in peace and happiness ; they 
are outside the restraining influence of cooperative 
industry. If there be any general condition of immo- 
rality that this theory fails to explain, I have failed to 
discover it and will be glad to have my attention drawn 
to it. 



72 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

The variable character of the moral standard can 
now be accounted for along evolutionary lines, a ques- 
tion of trial resulting in failure or success, as the case 
may be. It would be only by experiment that the differ- 
ence between the essential and non-essential could be 
found. Such principles as were supposed to be con- 
ducive to the common good, no matter how hard they 
pressed upon the individual, would become crystallized, 
and with the preeminence given to them by long cus- 
tom, would become part of the religion of the race. 
The immediate effect of the violation of any of the 
principles of a moral code are not always evident to 
the wrong-doer or his fellows, especially when they are 
inflamed by passion or have self-interest at stake. As 
a simple illustration, it is not infrequent for a man to 
mete out the death penalty to another for some real or 
fancied wrong, and so far as he is concerned nature 
would inflict no punishment. But the community suf- 
fers, for it loses the services of a producer in times 
of peace and a defender in times of war. So self-inter- 
est impels the community to forbid murder and to 
punish severely any one who commits it. 

A more complicated case is that of the propagation 
of the species. This results from the gratification of a 
natural appetite ; if it were not so, all of the higher 
forms of life would soon cease to exist. Among the 
lower types of the human race intercourse is very pro- 



MORALITY. 73 

miscuous, and there is consequently the same fighting 
and contention that we find among the lower animals. 
This proves injurious to the community as a whole, 
resulting as it does in the loss of producers and defend- 
ers, and accordingly regulations are devised for govern- 
ing the possession of the females. As the race advances 
in civilization the nurturing of the young becomes a 
more complicated problem, and so it is necessary to 
know who will be responsible for the support of the 
child until he can take care of himself. The marriage 
ceremony is practically such a declaration of responsi- 
bility, and the community, in return for the individual 
surrendering part of his rights, guarantees him the 
complete possession of the female. When natural food 
supply was easily secured a strong man could readily 
provide for many mouths, and accordingly gratified 
himself with a number of wives ; but as population 
increased, and food and other commodities depended 
more and more upon exertion, the fewer could a man 
care for and so he had to content himself with but one 
wife. Once the custom became established it naturally 
became part of the moral code. 

Certain violations of this particular rule in the 
moral code are considered as criminal in all com- 
munities and visited by severe penalties ; others are not 
recognized by the law. But while it is hard to conceive 
how obedience to a law of nature can be a sin at any 



74 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

time, such an act may be a decided offense against the 
well-being of the community and with great risk to 
the individual of personal suffering from contracting 
contagious disease ; therefore, it is very properly repro- 
bated. And so all violators are ostracized, and to 
emphasize the point they are threatened with awful 
punishment in a future state, for it need hardly be said 
the offender has found the offense not unpleasant in 
this. 

Offenses under the moral code can be classified 
under two headings, those against the Creator and 
those against man. The former are practically summed 
up in the word negligence — the omission of rendering 
the homage due him as our origin. The punishment 
for such is to be in the great future, of which by our 
senses we know nothing, and, therefore, it can not be 
discussed here. Those against man naturally fall under 
two heads, the physical and the mental. Among the 
former we include all that tend to suffering and to 
death, such as personal assault, theft, licentiousness 
and intemperance, either in eating or drinking. Among 
the latter are lying, hatred, contentiousness, envy and 
heresy. 

Among most civilized people personal assault, 
whether death ensues or not, is a crime and punishable 
by law. But it was not so always. In the days when 
physical courage counted for so much — and they are, 



MORALITY. 75 

after all, not so distant — the strong and bold man was 
an object of admiration and dread, and was permitted 
to do pretty much as he liked. If he was a born leader, 
and could gather round him a band of similar spirits, 
build a stronghold from which he could sally forth and 
rob and slay the comparatively defenseless at his pleas- 
ure, he gained the respect of the community. If he 
was fortunate enough to be a first-class swordsman 
he could insult and abuse with impunity, for he was 
considered a finished gentleman, because he granted to 
the ordinary individual the inestimable privilege, sup- 
posing he objected, of being done to death in a cere- 
monious fashion known as the code of honor. The 
Church, which claims to be the supreme court of appeal 
in all matters of morals, and the protector of the weak 
against the strong, gave sanction to all these acts, 
blessed the leaders before they started out on their 
expeditions, and, their earthly careers being ended, 
buried them with all pomp and ceremony and guaran- 
teed perfect happiness in the future state. 

But in due course of time the weak banded them- 
selves against the strong, gathered themselves into 
villages, which grew into towns and cities, and from 
merely resisting, began to carry the war into the 
enemy's camp, and subdued the noble robbers. In 
response to their demands all bloodshed and robbery 
became a crime, no matter who the perpetrator was, and 



j6 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

once the custom became established, the Church found 
it a part of the moral code. 

So with licentiousness, for until comparatively 
recent times it was highly creditable to bear the repu- 
tation of being a libertine, and the highest dignitaries 
of the Church rivaled the laity in the looseness of their 
conduct. But again the common people, who were 
naturally the sufferers from all this laxity, rebelled, 
so once more the Church found something in its moral 
code that had been dormant. 

Intemperance is usually supposed to be a term 
synonymous with drunkenness, but it applies equally 
to eating as to drinking; yet the glutton is called a 
hearty eater and complimented on his appetite, while 
the excessive drinker is pronounced a nuisance and a 
danger to society. But from what I have seen of this 
world more people die from excess in eating than in 
drinking, even although the latter is undoubtedly 
unnatural and of questionable value. 

Yet not so many years ago, to be recognized as a 
hard drinker was a certificate of eminent respectability, 
while the reverend gentleman who could dispose of 
six bottles of wine at one sitting, and then pronounce 
without a stammer the mystic words " Biblical Criti- 
cism," was deemed to have qualified himself for the 
degree of D.D. But now times are changing, and it is 
a disgrace to be seen drunk even once in a lifetime. 



MORALITY. 77 

Why? The answer is contained in four words — 
machinery makes men moral. When the workman 
handled only tools, and this still holds true, his absence 
from the bench did not stop the routine of the work- 
shop to any great extent, but when he controls a 
machine which turns out articles by thousands every 
day, his absence for even one day means considerable 
monetary loss to the employer, and so drunken work- 
men are soon discharged. This is especially noticeable 
in the printing, tailoring and shoemaking industries, 
which at one time were notorious for the inebriety of 
the employes. Very naturally the temperance move- 
ment took its origin among the working classes, for 
they were the principal sufferers, and just as naturally 
the upper classes and the clergy scouted it as being too 
extreme. The latter quoted myriads of texts from the 
Bible to show that wine was one of God's best gifts to 
man, they deplored intemperance, but curiously enough 
the grace of God did not prevent many of them from 
becoming drunkards. We are now in the second gen- 
eration from the beginning of the temperance move- 
ment, and the new stock of clergy, raised with the new 
ideas, are finding just as many texts to prove that drink 
is one of the inventions of his Satanic majesty, and 
therefore abstinence is essential to moral living. At 
no distant date the exigencies of living will probably 
compel every man to be an abstainer, and then the 



78 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

Church will accept the custom and make it part of the 
moral law. 

Our reasoning so far fairly well illustrates that the 
meaning conveyed by the term " moral " law is a per- 
fectly correct one, that it is the law, or rather the rule 
of custom. As time advances the origin of a custom 
is lost in the mists of antiquity, especially when the 
reason is not self-evident, and so a supernatural halo is 
apt to be attached to it. 

We can now readily understand why the moral 
standard is so much higher than it was fifty years ago, 
and far in advance of a few hundred years ago; it is 
simply a process of evolution or development, keeping 
equal pace with the industrial progress of society. But 
the end is not yet, for every year finds greater com- 
plexity in our cooperation which, as we have just seen, 
compels more surrender of natural rights by the in- 
dividual, and the more certain guarantees by the com- 
munity. What is the logical limit of this movement? 
Does it not seem as if the time will come when our 
cooperation will be so complex that the individual will 
have to surrender all his physical rights to the com- 
munity and in exchange be guaranteed full satisfaction 
of all his needs ? I feel certain such a time is bound to 
come and then we will have — socialism. 

From communism to socialism, that is the great 
onward movement of all society; from a condition 



MORALITY. 79 

absolutely free from restriction to one that is girded on 
every hand, from chaos to perfect order. I can not 
attempt to picture what such a state of affairs may 
be like, but of one thing I feel certain, it will not be a 
condition of absolute equality, as some fancy it. But 
its broad basis will be, as far as is humanly possible, 
equal opportunity for all, with less difference between 
the worldly comforts of the most and least fortunate. 
Private ownership will probably be limited to the home 
and its contents ; all else will be owned by the state. 
But there will be inequality in income just as there 
is now if we judge by such socialistic conditions as we 
have at the present time — the postoffice, army, navy, 
police, school, etc. — where there are grades from 
general to private, from superintendent to humblest 
servant. When such a condition of society shall arrive 
I can not foresee, whether in my own generation or the 
next, or a thousand years hence, but to me this course 
of reasoning about morality is the absolute proof that 
it is coming. From the moment that the first restric- 
tion of human action was made this end was in 
sight and the onward march to the goal had begun, 
but it is only in recent years that we have begun to 
vaguely see our destination. 

The individuals who strive to increase the com- 
plexity of our cooperation are the ones who are work- 
ing most assiduously for socialism, and so while our 



80 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

monetary giants, in order to increase their immense 
accumulations, are straining every nerve to organize 
huge corporations, they are but hastening the day 
when the social condition they most detest will be 
reached. This is the grimmest example of the irony of 
fate I know of in modern times. 

It may not be uninteresting to glance for a few 
moments at other ideals that appeal to many members 
of the race as being desirable. For instance, there are 
the communists who want a system of affairs or form 
of common life in which the right of private or family 
property shall be abolished by law, mutual consent or 
view. To this community of goods may be added the 
disappearance of family life. That is, they wish to 
revert to the primal condition of human society — 
to turn the hands of the clock backward. Undoubtedly, 
they wish to conserve cooperation, but this we have 
seen is the prime cause of restriction of liberty, so that 
the two conditions are incompatible. Hence all com- 
munistic experiments are doomed to failure. 

Then we have the individualist, the extreme type 
of which is the anarchist, who pursues a theory which 
regards the union of order with the absence of all 
direct government of man by man as the political ideal. 
He will be interested in the general cooperation only 
when he feels like it; so when he decides to stay out 
he is consequently free from all social restrictions, and 



MORALITY. 8 1 

if we follow his ideas to the logical limit he reverts 
to the primeval conditions of doing exactly as he 
pleases, limited only by what others may do to him. 

His position is rather an interesting one and worth 
examination. To give it due consideration we are 
forced to ask ourselves this question, Do we human 
beings possess free will or do we not ? We have either 
one or the other : there is logically no half-way house. 
If we have no free will, if we are victims of our hered- 
itary instincts, plus all the impressions we may have 
acquired in the course of our life, then the individualist 
is asking for the unattainable. But if we have absolute 
free will, then he may claim that he is entitled to do 
exactly as he pleases. Suppose that he considers him- 
self perfectly justified in helping himself to any article 
that belongs to another individual — steal it, according 
to our present-day notions — by that one act he at once 
reverts to the primeval condition. Then so far as he is 
concerned the community are equally entitled to revert 
to the same condition, and do with him as they please 
— in other words, punish him. The anarchist's position 
therefore, whichever way we look at it, is a very 
absurd one. 

Consideration of it, however, has enriched us by a 
logical basis for the punishment of lawbreakers, and 
that in turn brings us to the old proposition, What is 
right and what is wrong? The definition of morality 



82 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

I have ventured to give leads us to this judgment : that 
any restriction of human conduct that is advantageous 
to the community as a whole and also to the individual 
affected, is right. So that whenever we deprive him 
of a certain liberty we must give him something better 
in exchange. For instance, we forbid him to help 
himself to other people's property, but as far as is 
humanly possible we guarantee possession of his own, 
which is more advantageous. Again, the community 
forbids free love, but on the other hand it makes pos- 
sible the home life, the center of most of the pleasures 
that we mortals can enjoy. And so on with every 
limitation of our conduct, so that any proposal to 
restrain the liberty of action of any sane and well-con- 
ducted individual, without giving him an equivalent 
at least, is not right, and is bound to fail. 

As a corollary whatever is injurious to the indi- 
vidual and to the community is wrong. 

The evolutionist believes that all habits and traits 
persisted in for many generations tend to become auto- 
matic in the race, therefore we should expect that it 
will be natural for the vast majority of human beings 
to conform readily to the restrictions of conduct that 
have proved themselves to be advantageous. Through 
long sustained effort our ancestors must have subdued 
the strength of certain desires and passed on to us a 
moral instinct that would tend to guide us right. This 



MORALITY. 83 

is actually the case and we find in Conscience the sum 
of the results of the moral experiments of all our ances- 
tors. With it for a guide all of us are up to a certain 
point automatically good; beyond that, even with the 
best intentions to do the right, we are apt to do the 
wrong, simply through ignorance. Thus life will 
always have its problems, for while we may under- 
stand the theory of conduct, it will frequently be 
difficult to decide what to do in any particular instance. 

We all have our moral ideals, and we are all anxious 
for others to live according to our own standard rather 
than their own. The surest means of elevating the 
moral conduct of any individual or class of the com- 
munity is to involve them more thoroughly in the com- 
plexity of our cooperation ; in plain English, teach 
them how to work and if necessary find a field of labor 
for them. To me it is plain as day that they can logic- 
ally require this, for if we insist upon a certain effect, 
they are more than justified in demanding that the 
community provide the cause. 

But work, I have shown, is applied knowledge of 
nature's facts and laws. 



84 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 



CHAPTER IX. 



HUMANITY. 



It is rather difficult to get an exact definition of the 
word that heads this chapter. For instance, I find one 
authority who says, " Humanity is so much kindness 
and tenderness toward man and beast as it would be 
inhuman not to have." That is, humanity is the state 
of not being inhuman, which is no definition at all, for 
there are many kinds of human beings in this world, 
the least civilized individuals being atrociously cruel 
and vindictive, and most others intensely selfish. 
To my mind, humanity means something more than 
strict justness would demand. We all reprobate the 
individual who exacts the uttermost farthing from his 
debtor, if such action will leave the latter destitute. 
There is the feeling of humanity in the friendly greet- 
ing of the rich man of the village to his poorest neigh- 
bors, of the most cultivated to the most illiterate, 
though in strict justice neither seems necessary, for the 
one is in no way apparently obligated to the other. But 
it has long been realized that every human being owes 
it to his fellow creatures to consider their condition 



HUMANITY. 85 

and if possible to make life more worth living for the 
millions who at best know little of its pleasures. 

This conception of humanity is a noble one, worthy 
of the finest ideals of our imagination, and looks for- 
ward to a time when there will be plenty for all, when 
crime will be unknown, and kindness and consideration 
shall be on every hand — the ideal time when no one 
shall be for self but all shall be for the state. It is 
almost desecration to take such a noble sentiment, lay 
it on the dissecting table, cut into it in a cold-blooded, 
matter-of-fact way, lay bare its mechanism and try to 
discover its origin. It is undoubtedly something natu- 
ral and will therefore work in a perfectly natural way, 
be found to have begun, developed, and to be still 
developing, according to some definite natural prin- 
ciple, and therefore we are perfectly justified in strip- 
ping off its flesh to examine its bones. 

Let us look at primitive man as he exists today, 
and also at highly developed man when some untoward 
accident reduces him to primitive conditions, and let 
us see how much humanity there is in his composition. 
How much does the savage display, whether he be 
Australian aborigine, African Kaffir, or red Indian? 
The word is unknown in his vocabulary, and his every 
act indicates that cruelty, bloodthirstiness and robbery 
are with him the greatest of virtues. Every individual 
finds it difficult enough to get sufficient food to keep 



86 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

himself and those dependent upon him alive without 
wasting his thoughts on how to help others outside of 
his own tribe, and even the latter would be neglected 
were it not that they are a valuable factor in times of 
danger and at the season of securing food. No human- 
ity here, but rather a desperate struggle for existence 
where only the fittest survive. 

The struggle for existence — ah, there is possibly 
the key to the problem ; so let us see how civilized man 
behaves when food is scarce and hunger is pressing. 
Let us look into the slums of our big cities where such 
are most plentiful, and what do we find? Even here 
there are grades of penury, but when we get right down 
to the lowest stratum, there we see no evidences of 
humanity. Where every one is on the eternal rack 
wondering where the next crust of bread is to come 
from, we find man's inhumanity to man as pronounced 
as among the lowest savages, only restrained by the 
power of law enforced upon him unwillingly by the 
community. Cruelty to wife and little ones, cruelty 
to man's faithful friend, the dog, savage exhibitions 
of bloodthirstiness, and robbery at every turn, all indi- 
cate no sense of obligation to one's fellow man. Only 
the desperate struggle for existence, and the survival 
of the fittest, survival to a life that is not worth living. 

Let us take a higher flight. The British soldier 
has never been called a coward: nav. on a thousand 



HUMANITY. 87 

occasions he has nonchalantly sought death at the 
cannon's mouth, cheerfully giving up his own life that 
others may live. But let us see how he behaves in the 
hour of his direst necessity. Every one has read of the 
infamous Black Hole of Calcutta, when one hundred 
and forty-six British prisoners were thrust into a dark 
prison cell with only one small window, on one awful 
tropical summer night, and how in the morning only 
twenty-three were found alive. There is no need to 
emphasize the harrowing scene the dawn presented, 
how strong men had fought like demons, treading 
under foot gentle women and crushing out their lives 
in the desperate effort to get a mouthful of fresh air. 
Here was a deficiency of an essential to human life, 
and the natural consequence a desperate struggle for 
existence and the survival of the fittest. Yet we can 
picture to ourselves how these brave British soldiers 
at the outset would courteously give the ladies the 
position next the window ; but only a little later, when 
nature asserted itself, trample them down as they 
fought for the point of vantage. 

Is there a cry of fire in a crowded theater? Then 
instantly humanity and discretion vanish and all 
rush pell-mell for the exits. Too often the story has 
been told, how in such awful stampedes hundreds have 
been crushed to death, when, had coolness prevailed, 
all would have escaped in safety ; but the tale is almost 



88 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

always the same — only a desperate struggle for exist- 
ence. 

Can you picture to yourself a community deprived 
of food until its members were famishing, and then a 
supply injudiciously placed where it could be got at 
by them helping themselves? It has happened again 
and again in the world's history when stupid men had 
the management of affairs, and the result has always 
been the same : a desperate struggle to satisfy the crav- 
ing of hunger, the crushing out of helpless lives and 
the maiming of poor unfortunates. No humanity there. 

When men are well fed, they will in the face of 
danger meet death with banners flying, bands playing 
and drums beating, as in the case of the " Birken- 
head " ; but when pressed by hunger or thirst or 
asphyxiation they revert to the primeval state and act 
like savages. 

There is no humanity in the face of a deficit, only a 
desperate struggle to obtain the means of subsistence 
in which the fittest survive. 

It is a humiliating conclusion, but it is a law of 
nature and therefore absolute; so we can only accept 
the facts, because it is utterly impossible to change 
them. 

But let us look at the opposite condition — that of a 
surplus. We are at a banquet, where there is plenty of 
everything, far more than the company can eat. Not 



HUMANITY. ©9 

one individual has missed a meal for years in all prob- 
ability, in fact has not known what it is to be really 
hungry, and should he even miss this one, would not 
be greatly inconvenienced. See how leisurely the com- 
pany sit down, how courteously each wishes to help 
his neighbor before attending to his own wants, and 
in every action tries to show that he considers others 
before himself. Listen to their conversation as the 
meal draws to an end, possibly they have been hours 
over it, and you will find it very edifying. As they 
complacently fill their own stomachs they pity the poor 
unfortunates who have not enough to eat, and only 
hope that the rulers of the feast will let them have the 
crumbs. A most benign wish, breathing of beautiful 
humanity. Yes, there is humanity in a surplus. I 
need hardly say that the British soldier in the Black 
Hole of Calcutta, who trampled down tender women 
in his desperate effort to get fresh air, would, in the 
shaded garden where it was plentiful, most courte- 
ously attend to every whim and wish of the same 
women, finding for them the most shaded nooks and 
most comfortable seats. But then, there was no ques- 
tion of air supply. There was a surplus. 

And so in all our multifarious interests. We can 
be very generous, very humane, when we have got 
more of any one thing than we can possibly find use 
for. We are all more or less like bees and possess a 



90 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

mania for collecting and storing up until we reach 
the point of satiety. The youthful stamp collector, 
while the craze lasts, is a most selfish individual, but 
in due time he becomes satiated, his interest wanes, so 
he generously gives away part or all of his collection. 
We all remember how enthusiastically in our boyhood 
days we schemed to get the other boys' marbles to add 
to our collection, and generally were not too sensitive 
on little points of honor when an advantage could be 
gained. We stored them away in bags and boxes, and 
nothing in the world in our estimation could equal in 
value a fine collection of marbles, but we became satia- 
ted, our interests changed, so we made another happy 
by our generosity. 

In older life it is much the same; we still want to 
collect. Now it is engravings, paintings, books, anti- 
quarian relics or dollars, particularly the latter, but 
some day we find many of them are of little value to us, 
so we give them away to some public institution, and 
the world talks of our generosity and humanity. The 
gift measured by the standard of those who have not 
is a noble one, but when judged by our own it is a 
mere bagatelle. 

In surplus there is humanity, in deficit mighty little, 
the greatest amount in self-interest. In the name of 
humanity we push sewer and water systems through 
our slums, provide schools, colleges and libraries, build 



HUMANITY. 91 

hospitals, provide doctors, nurses and medicine, yet, 
after all, the mainspring is self-interest. The sanita- 
tion and hygiene of the poor did not interest the rich 
man until he learned that the slum was a hotbed of 
diseases that found their way to the mansion and pal- 
ace. Then the conscience of Dives was aroused and he 
forced his humanitarian ideas on his poorer neighbors, 
much to the latter's disgust. The business man needs 
educated labor in his business and therefore in the 
name of humanity he builds educational institutions 
and compels the poorest to attend them. This is self- 
interest, pure and simple, and is only another illustra- 
tion of my contention that true knowledge is invari- 
ably converted into work. 

Self-interest is frequently railed at as being an 
ignoble quality, but so far as I can see, it is a natural 
instinct, and is the mental equivalent of our physical 
appetites. When nature wants us to do a thing, she 
makes certain that we shall do it. She intends us to 
eat, drink and reproduce, and we have no choice but 
obey. Were the question of living left to our own voli- 
tion, had we the choice to eat and live, or fast and die, 
we may safely assume that the human race would cease 
to exist in a very short time. So if nature intends that 
we shall study her facts and laws, she will assuredly 
compel us to do so. This she does by implanting self- 
interest in us. Under this impulse we investigate 



92 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR t 

nature, our work becomes the common property of the 
race, and its members benefit equally with ourselves. 
Conversely, our ignorance influences them injuriously, 
and theirs is equally hurtful to us. When the human 
race thoroughly realizes this mutual interdependence, 
it will enter upon a career of mutual education that will 
mark the dawn of a new era for it. I will not prophesy 
a halcyon age, but one of greater pleasure and happi- 
ness, since there will be a perpetual interest in life. 

I recognize to the full the altruistic tendencies of 
the present day which influence many thinking mem- 
bers of the community to give of their time, money and 
effort to ameliorate the surroundings and elevate the 
standard of living of the poorest and most miserable 
members, but I would draw attention to the fact that all 
this humane effort is of comparatively recent date, and 
appeared only when the race had exacted from Mother 
Nature more than the members could comfortably 
use — in fact, had a large surplus on hand. Should 
the time ever come when the population will overtake 
the food supply, as is the normal condition of affairs, 
then I am afraid this altruism resulting from surplus 
will die a natural death. We must have one founded 
on a stronger basis, and this we find in nature's own 
plan — self-interest. 

Now let us compare the results produced by self- 
interest with what is attained by the exercise of that 



HUMANITY. 93 

phase of humanity popularly known as charity. Christ 
told one anxious inquirer to sell all he had and give to 
the poor, and Christians in every land consider it one 
of their greatest privileges to give something for noth- 
ing. No matter the cause, if any one be in need of 
the necessities of life, doles are handed out much to 
the satisfaction of the recipient and the pleasure of the 
giver, the latter feeling that it is more blessed to give 
than to receive. Poets have sung of my lady bountiful, 
and painters have enshrined her in living colors, while 
every church in the land boasts of the amount it gives 
away in charity. One church above all others for long 
centuries has been famed for its eleemosynary deeds, 
and today it has a band of devoted men and women 
whose only aim is to receive with one hand and give 
away with the other. If there be anything in the evo- 
lutionist theory of the struggle for existence and the 
survival of the fittest, then their whole policy is to 
thwart the workings of this law of nature, and if they 
can combat it successfully, then the law is not a law, 
for it is not absolute, and therefore need not be con- 
sidered for one moment. 

Do they outwit this law ? If they do, then the recip- 
ients of their bounty through long generations will 
have at least held their own, nay, will probably be 
marching at the head of the races. What are the facts ? 
Look at the nations still under the control of the 



94 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

Romanist Church, which is ever ready to succor the 
starving with enough to keep body and soul together ; 
look at Spain, Italy and Austria, and tell me if you 
find a virile race. I trow not; in fact, we call them 
the decadent, degenerate races of Europe. Protestant 
Ireland has a hardy, energetic, thriving population; 
Catholic Ireland is a seething mass of hunger and dis- 
content. 

After the Reformation there was little of charity 
among the Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic races. In a 
blind, brutal way they realized that he who does not 
work should not eat, and left him to his fate. Such 
conduct was undoubtedly hard on the individual, and 
must have caused great misery, but the actual outcome 
is, that the desperate struggle to make even a bare 
living has resulted in the most wonderful and plenteous 
production of comforts, and the great mass of these 
races is well housed, well clad and well fed. With 
such a wealth of products it is little wonder that in 
their ignorance the tender-hearted have foolishly devel- 
oped the habit of giving something for nothing, with 
the inevitable consequences — the degeneracy of the 
recipients, and a rapid increase in their numbers. We 
can expatiate for thousands of years to the lapsed 
masses upon the beauties of industry, thrift and the 
hundred other virtues they ought to practice, but so 
long as they can eke out a precarious livelihood by 



HUMANITY. 95 

playing the parasite, they will be perfectly content to 
be such. Nature's laws are inexorable, and any effort 
to trammel their free play is the height of folly. 

Did you ever stop to think where the highest types 
of the human race are reared ? Not in the lap of lux- 
ury, where the summers are long and the winters are 
short, where the soil is rich and easily cultivated, but 
on the lofty mountains of Switzerland and Norway, 
the salt, sterile, marshy land of Prussia, the bleak, cold 
soil of Scotland, perhaps the most infertile ground 
naturally in the world, and in the tangled backwoods 
of New England and Canada. Struggle, eternal strug- 
gle, is nature's law for the development and advance- 
ment of the human race, and any effort to withstand 
the operation of that law will recoil with terrible pun- 
ishment upon our heads. We are beginning to realize 
this a little in our dealings with the lapsed masses, and 
are frowning upon indiscriminate giving. When a 
man asks for bread we offer him work if we possibly 
can, but too often, alas, he knows no labor the world 
wants. He is ignorant, and must pay nature's penalty ; 
discomfort and discontent are his portion. No need to 
bewail that in all probability he is not to blame, for 
ignorance of a crime is no excuse for its committal, 
and we are punished for the ignorance of others as 
well as for our own. So having found that preaching 
the gospel makes but little impression on this poor, 
7 



g6 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

inert mass, that amusement provided by young ladies 
in tea-gowns and young gentlemen in evening suits 
has no effect, that compelling them to memorize much 
uninteresting data about geography, history and a 
dozen other useless studies does not elevate them any, 
at length it is dawning upon us that it might be sensi- 
ble to teach them how to handle tools so that they could 
earn a living. The mind of man hath sought out many 
inventions, a few of them good, the vast majority of 
them worthless ; but the brightest discovery he ever 
will make is when he learns that the only way to out- 
wit the law of the survival of the fittest is to make the 
weakest members of the race more fit. 

So here we are again back to the old conclusion : 
man is learning facts of nature and the laws that gov- 
ern them, and whenever he gets at true knowledge the 
result redounds to his comfort and the good of the race. 



97 



CHAPTER X. 

RELIGION. 

The subject of this chapter is a ticklish one, for 
whenever the word religion is mentioned, every relig- 
ious man feels that it is his religion that is being dis- 
cussed ; not only that, but the particular creed in which 
he believes. Now I will state it as a general proposi- 
tion that the more ignorant a person is, the more posi- 
tive is he that he knows it all ; further, that the value 
of a man's opinion upon any subject can be measured 
only by the amount of brain quality he possesses, plus 
the amount of mental effort he exercised before form- 
ing the opinion. The average individual's religion is 
that to which he was born heir, so we can ordinarily 
assume that he sucked it in with his mother's milk, 
and his brains had little to do with the case. Here is 
the simple reason why most people are so terribly 
touchy on religious matters — in plain words, their 
knowledge being a minimum quantity, their obstinacy 
is at its maximum. 

All races possess a religion of some sort or another, 
and this has always been advanced as an unanswerable 



98 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

argument in proof of the existence of some supernatural 
power or being. The most advanced races call their 
form of belief — Judaism, Christianity, Mohammedan- 
ism, Buddhism — religion, all others are superstitions. 
What constitutes the distinction between these two 
classes ? So far as I can determine, in the one the belief 
in the supernatural is supposed to influence the moral 
conduct of the individual ; in the other it does not. The 
latter being the more primitive, deserves first consider- 
ation. 

Man is a rational animal, who rarely reasons ; in 
fact, credulity is the characteristic of the majority of 
mankind the world over. They are but overgrown chil- 
dren, who, being unable to trace effects to their natural 
causes, at once assign to them a supernatural origin. 
This is a very convenient means of confessing igno- 
rance without being exposed to the reproach of stu- 
pidity. 

We can readily see how in the infancy of the human 
race nature worship would arise. Man's world would 
be a little one, for it would be confined within the nat- 
ural barriers that prevented him from roaming, prob- 
ably a few hundred square miles in area. As he men- 
tally progressed he would begin to note the recurrence 
of nature's seasons. The gentle rains of spring causing 
the buds to sprout and the life-giving fruit to follow 
would be to him even a greater source of pleasure than 



RELIGION. 99 

it is to us today, as in all likelihood he had not learned 
to store up for the time of dearth in winter. He would 
rejoice in the summer's heat and revel in the bounteous 
fare spread for him as the autumn approached. Win- 
ter with its chill winds and scanty food supply would 
be but a weary season. 

But they recurred so frequently and so regularly 
that he soon learned they were perfectly natural, and 
therefore to be expected. It was different, however, 
with the torrential storms carrying destruction in the 
roaring floods or the lightning's path, the pestilence 
that walked by night or the earthquake that shook his 
little world till it seemed about to collapse. These were 
accidents, that is, unexpected, because their cause was 
not understood, and therefore must have been sent by a 
superior power whose sphere of action was partial and 
invariably injurious. Such a whimsical being would 
have to be conciliated and the most natural thing in the 
world would be to offer him such things as man himself 
liked — food and ornaments — so we can readily 
account for the origin of the sacrifice. 

Whatever forces of nature produce results beneficial 
to man he deems good; those that injure him are bad. 
So there are good and evil spirits, the one to be 
thanked, the other humored. But the former brings 
round the seasons with all regularity whether he be 
worshiped or not, and so is apt to be neglected; the 
LefC. 



100 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR i 

latter may develop an evil mood at any moment and 
must therefore be assiduously wooed to keep him, if 
possible, in good humor. We can today laugh at such 
simple conceptions of the force of nature, but after the 
Galveston horror I took occasion to inquire of two very 
devout friends of mine how they accounted for it, and 
one assured me it was undoubtedly one of God's ter- 
rible warnings to sinners, while the other was as cer- 
tainly convinced that it was one of Satan's most wicked 
acts, and that he wrestled in prayer with the Lord every 
night to so restrain him that he could never repeat such 
a terribly iniquitous deed. Both are highly intelligent 
men, so the incident shows how much one is influenced 
by the point of view. The weather observer foresaw 
the possibility of the disaster days before it occurred, 
and considers the matter as the result of a combination 
of natural forces that happened to concentrate their 
power at the same spot. 

From nature worship to deities is an easy transition 
by evolution. Great chiefs die, and their memory lin- 
gers long in tradition. Their qualities and powers are 
exaggerated as time goes on, until they are deemed to 
have accomplished unnatural wonders while on earth. 
This is no fancy sketch, for the populace dearly love the 
marvelous, and I have vivid recollections of an event in 
my boyhood, when a doctor from an adjacent county 
was pointed out to me by an old man as being the clev- 



RELIGION. IOI 

erest in the world, for in a case of diphtheria he had 
cut off the boy's head, scraped his throat, sewed on the 
head again, and the boy recovered. Everybody in the 
district believed in the truth of the tale, and berated me 
because I could not even at that early age accept it. 
Very probably he had performed the operation of tra- 
cheotomy. 

So the nature gods become personified in the ances- 
tral heroes who are supposed to still exercise the great 
powers they possessed during their lifetime, and not 
infrequently are represented by images. If neglected, 
any calamity that occurs is at once credited to them, 
and conciliation is necessary. Like a mighty chief, the 
god can only be approached by those who are friends of 
the family, so men superior in intellect pretend to be the 
visible representatives of the invisible god symbolized 
by the image. They assume to exercise in his name the 
power of good or evil, and claim offerings or voluntary 
contributions from the worshipers for their services 
as mediators between the poor, miserable mortals and 
the invisible god before whom the worshipers tremble 
like slaves in the presence of an enraged master. Here 
we find the evolution of the idea of a future state, which 
is limited to but a favored few, those who were chiefs 
or kings on earth, for how could a poor slave or humble 
member of the tribe ever dare to hope to be on the same 
plane as his ruler. Here also originates the priest, 



102 WHAT ARE WE HERE FORT 

claiming what does not belong to him and reaping 
where he has not sown. He becomes one of an institu- 
tion, a close corporation, which puts him on a plane 
high above his fellows. 

As knowledge of nature is acquired, effects are one 
by one traced to their natural causes, and so one after 
another the gods are discarded until they are narrowed 
down in the religion of Judaism to only two, represent- 
ing the forces of good and evil — God and Satan. 
Being the most highly developed animal on this earth, 
man assumed that he was the special end of creation, 
that everything in the universe — sun, moon and stars ; 
trees, flowers and fruits ; animals, domestic and wild ; 
the perfume of the flowers, the melody of the birds, the 
gorgeous coloring of the blossoms — all were created 
for his use and delectation. We know better now. We 
have learned that, as compared with the stars and other 
planets, our earth is little more than an orange, while 
we are not so much as would be ants crawling around 
its rind. But while he believed himself to be the most 
important end of creation, man measured the value of 
everything by its utility to him ; if beneficial it was 
good, if detrimental it was bad. But now he is gradu- 
ally learning that physically he is only one among other 
animals, all struggling to eke out a livelihood by secur- 
ing the most useful of nature's products. In this strife 
he has a tremendous handicap in his favor, being pos- 



RELIGION. 103 

sessed of reasoning power which enables him to Under- 
stand nature's forces and so guide them that they pro- 
vide bountifully and with certainty for all his needs and 
most of his wants. Wherever other life competes suc- 
cessfully with him he remorselessly destroys it, whether 
it be flitting insect, ravening wolf or elusive gopher, 
just as they would do to him had they the power. 

Having, as in Judaism, reduced his gods to two, 
one is made subordinate to the other by being consid- 
ered his creature, but for some reason or other utterly 
unexplainable is given tremendous powers for evil over 
the human race. The beneficent spirit is deemed the 
creator of all things, and being good, can manifest 
himself and his power only in goodness, so the original 
condition of this world must have been perfect. But 
one of his creatures to whom he had given great 
authority over the world revolts, and proceeds with 
great subtlety to bring the principal inhabitants of this 
earth — the first pair — to his sinful level, and with 
them, all life. 

The Creator is naturally very angry and visits the 
poor, deluded victims and all their descendants with 
severe penalties, including death. To regain his favor 
they must first proclaim frequently and aloud that he is 
the only god, and continuously obey without question a 
large number of severe laws he imposes upon them, 
every one of which is at variance with their natural 



104 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

instincts. To help them he selects certain of their num- 
ber, whom he favors, to be the channel of communica- 
tion between him and them, and they must accept with- 
out question whatever communications are delivered, 
disobedience being visited with great calamities. 

His intermediaries, like those of the benighted hea- 
then, form a close corporation, and their physical wel- 
fare is provided for by commands delivered through 
the individuals to be benefited. 

When the human race attained to fairly developed 
intelligence these messages ceased, and the work of the 
intermediary today is to expound the vague meaning 
of those received thousands of years ago, which, on 
account of their florid imagery, are open to many inter- 
pretations. 

In the course of the exposition of my views I have 
studiously endeavored to base all my arguments on 
recognized facts, and so I will say nothing on that part 
of the theologian's dogma which treats of man's obliga- 
tion to his God, for this is something entirely beyond 
proof and is based by them entirely on faith — that is, 
acceptance without understanding. But they also claim 
that morality takes its origin in their institution ; that 
in fact it is a revelation of God's will through them, and 
that disobedience to it will entail punishment both here 
and hereafter, and they point to many instances of 
physical suffering as the penalty meted out to violators 



RELIGION. 105 

of the moral code as proof of their contention. But 
nature's laws are absolute, and so we can logically 
expect that the moral laws of the Creator of the Uni- 
verse will be just as certain. Therefore punishment 
will invariably follow the offense, the sinner will be in 
constant trouble, while the conformer will be always 
healthy and happy. 

But the facts do not square with the theory, for the 
wicked too frequently flourish like the bay tree, while 
the righteous are even more prone to be in perpetual 
discomfort and misery. For twenty years of my life I 
have continually asked myself this question : " Why 
are there so many decent, industrious, good-living 
people who are anxious to do what is right, suffering 
trials and tribulations all the time ? It could not be on 
account of sin, for their constant effort was to be as 
free from it as possible, and I knew and still know 
many whose every thought and act is in violation of 
the moral code, but who are seemingly as free from 
care and trouble as a healthy child 

Now I know the cause of their suffering ; it was not 
disobedience to a moral code, but ignorance of nature's 
laws, and she exacted the penalty to the limit as she 
invariably does. So the theologian's claim as to what 
constitutes morality is just as unfounded as is his 
assertion that it takes its origin through his institution, 
the Church ; for, as we have seen, it is the product of 



106 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

cooperation in obedience to the working of a great nat- 
ural law. So, like the priest of the aborigine, he is 
reaping where he did not sow. 

Religion is universal, and has persisted undoubtedly 
since the infancy of the human race many long years 
ago ; therefore it must have been advantageous, other- 
wise it could not have had so prolonged a career. What 
then is its mission? I have shown that all religions 
invariably resent the introduction of a new idea, but 
that after the principle has been established it is admit- 
ted into the canon and vouched for by the priest as not 
being at variance with God's revealed will, but unfor- 
tunately, had been overlooked and consequently neg- 
lected. If we consider the point we will find that from 
the general acceptance of the idea by the laity to its 
tolerance by the priesthood the interval is about a space 
of a generation. This is easily explained by the fact 
that the clergy are devoted to the study of written 
dogma and entirely out of touch with the active affairs 
of the world. Their successors are probably not yet 
born, but in the formative period of life they are asso- 
ciated with the mass of humanity, see the principle in 
active operation, and therefore tolerant, if not enam- 
ored of it ; so when they in turn control the affairs of 
the religious world they square the theory with the fact. 
But in turn they crystallize in the condition in which 
they renounced active interest in mundane affairs and 



RELIGION. 107 

devoted their efforts to expounding the theory of liv- 
ing for the best interests of the race. Any new idea is 
resented by them in turn, so the heterodoxy of today 
is orthodoxy a generation hence. The origin of the 
principle is soon forgotten, for its introduction is prob- 
ably accidental, but, being of benefit, expands and sur- 
vives, and becomes persistent. It was clearly not man- 
made, so the priest reasons, therefore must have been 
a direct revelation from God, and so the sacred book is 
added to. 

The more advanced theological thinkers of today 
recognize that religion and morals are as much gov- 
erned by the law of evolution as are all animate objects 
and their other interests. They no longer insist on 
the Bible being word for word a direct revelation from 
the Creator, but the result of impressions that he made 
on the minds of the writers, such impressions being 
suited to the peoples and times to whom the revelation 
was made. 

They can not account why a definite revelation was 
not made at once, but take refuge behind the assertion 
that it is God's way of doing things. They may be 
right, but it is one of those phrases which are inca- 
pable of either proof or disproof. 

The function of religion, then — all religion — is to 
preserve such principles and rules of conduct as expe- 
rience has demonstrated to be conducive to the welfare 



108 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

of the human race. Its natural tendency is to conserv- 
atism and crystallization, and once it attains the latter 
condition it becomes a positive hindrance to progress. 
But there is no limit to man's learning new truths by 
experience, for the incidents and events are happening 
continually, and so the more intelligent members of a 
race develop beyond the standards of their religion. 
This marks the beginning of a struggle between the 
more intellectual and less intelligent portions, the latter 
trying to suppress the former as heretics. But there 
can be no bounds or bars set on thought, and in due 
course of time the parties become more equally bal- 
anced. The struggle is now desperate, appeal is made 
to arms, and possibly for centuries the strife may con- 
tinue until the new ideas prevail. The nation or race 
is reborn to a new system of ethics which in time will 
become as intolerant as the one it supplanted. If we 
look around us we can see the process going on today. 
The Roman Catholic Church for many centuries satis- 
fied the ethical ideas of Europe, but the people of north- 
ern Europe who had to struggle hard to eke out a pre- 
carious living developed mentally at a faster rate than 
those along the shores of the Mediterranean. They 
had to study more closely nature and nature's laws and 
learned things the more favored ones did not. Reason- 
ing upon these experiences, new ideals were formed the 
Church failed to satisfy, and so they diverged. The 



RELIGION. 109 

conservative element tried to restrain the other, and war 
followed, bathing many a fair acre with blood. The 
struggle is not finished even yet, for France, situated 
partly in the north and partly in the south, consequently 
partly conservative and partly progressive — fickle, in 
fact — is prolonging the agony over a period that will 
probably be measured by centuries. To make matters 
more complicated, the pains of a second labor are upon 
her, for in her struggle to retain her industrial status 
she is forced to study science, and thus she is compelled 
to take at one effort what naturally should come in two. 
The influence of religion is manifested through the 
Church, which is an institution composed of those who 
lead and those who follow. The former deny the right 
of the latter to freedom of thought and insist that they 
shall limit the wanderings of their intellect within a 
certain sharply defined area encompassed by a formula 
called a creed. Acceptance of this insures eternal hap- 
piness in a future state, rejection will result in the very 
opposite. Viewed calmly, this is a most absurd propo- 
sition, but it is only one more proof of how slowly 
human liberty is being regained. It took many a long 
century of weary struggle to secure to every man in 
the civilized world the right to transport his body wher- 
ever he pleased, and it is now gradually dawning upon 
the human race that as the mind is higher than the 
body, it ought to be just as free. 



110 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR i 

All institutions, whether sovereignty, legislative 
body, judiciary, Church, land ownership, industrial 
corporation, or trades union, wield tremendous powers 
and possess great possibilities. Being formed by com- 
binations of individuals, they have the characteristics 
of men. All individuals tend to accumulation and 
aggrandizement, too often at the expense of their fel- 
lows, but death puts an end to it all, and what was gath- 
ered is scattered. Institutions are practically perma- 
nent, and so they continually add to their privileges, 
each new aggrandizement being at the expense of the 
great mass of humanity. When the latter realize a 
little part of what they have lost, and demand restitu- 
tion, they find the former intrenched firmly behind laws 
they themselves have made. A long desperate struggle 
is likely to follow, and not infrequently the rights are 
recovered by revolution. 

The Church is our oldest institution, having out- 
lived dynasties and kingdoms without number, and 
therefore at its height it was the most privileged body 
on earth. Not only did it control the thoughts of men 
and dictate their rules of conduct, but it secured posses- 
sion of the best land in Europe and one of its finest 
realms for temporal government, at the same time dic- 
tating the policy of all other countries. The inevitable 
followed — the struggle of the Reformation occurred, 
and little by little the Caucasian races are recovering 



RELIGION. Ill 

their rights from the Church. With the introduction of 
schism, the human race entered upon a new era, for 
in the multiplicity of creeds there is safety. Sorrowful 
is the condition of a nation where only one is permitted ; 
two lead to perpetual contention ; a hundred permits 
man to be what he is, a rational being. 

The Church has been and is a conservative force 
in society, but also obstructive. As a preserver it has 
worked for the best interests of the race, as an obstruc- 
tor it has wrought untellable misery. It is, I feel, 
humanly impossible to draw a balance sheet to find its 
actual position, but the following facts may be inter- 
esting. On the credit side we have the great mental 
pleasure and comfort it has given to millions, its, 
defense of the poor against the oppression of the rich 
when it suited its purpose, its keeping up before the 
human race ethical ideals that were for the benefit of 
mankind. Against it we must charge the direct loss of 
ten million lives slain in campaigns as a consequence of 
religious wars, with all the attendant misery ; the awful 
retardation to human progress due to its forbidding for 
more than a thousand years any study of nature, so 
that the art of medicine came to an absolute standstill ; 
the spreading of disease and vermin by the filthy habits 
of many of its devotees who, to crucify the flesh, 
eschewed the use of water and clean clothes ; its 
aggrandizement of so much land that in some countries 
8 



112 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR t 

it practically owned half the soil, the product of which 
was spent in vainglorious show instead of on the mental 
development and physical comfort of the people; its 
stunting the minds of men by insisting that they must 
not think even if they were rational beings, but that 
they must accept without question certain creeds, even 
if they did seem absurd. This is the record of its past ; 
today it is not so oppressive because the laity have 
wrenched from the priesthood a great many of their 
rights, but still the domination of the Church is very 
strong, although it is fast losing its grip. It has been 
ousted out of state government and school control, 
much to its indignation, but he would be a bold man 
who would propose among a free people to return to 
the old conditions. Today it costs the people of Chris- 
tian lands one billion dollars a year to uphold the 
Church, and this does not include the value of the free 
services given to it on every hand by enthusiastic 
devotees. What material results does the world get 
for this tremendous expenditure. Viewed from a 
strictly materialistic standpoint, the Church is paid to 
uplift the moral behavior of the community, so that the 
worst may try to live in accordance with the ideals of 
the best. Does it fulfil its mission? It may point to 
its well-filled pews as an answer, but it can claim no 
credit for keeping men and women moral who were 
born and reared that way. It must prove its case by 



RELIGION. 113 

curing the morally diseased, the denizens of our slums. 
Here organized society is giving it every possible aid 
by appointing officials whose sole business it is to force 
everybody to conduct themselves in accordance with 
the best ideals of the majority, and to deprive offenders 
of liberty, aye, even of life itself in some instances, as 
a punishment for non-compliance. 

I frankly concede the gigantic efforts that churches 
of all denominations are making to elevate the morals 
of the lowest stratum of society, and I respect and 
admire the persistency of every worker, but do they 
accomplish anything ; does the combined dread of pun- 
ishment in this world and in a future one make men 
moral? Is the mass becoming smaller? Here and 
there they snatch a brand from the burning, but 
despite their efforts it grows bigger. It is a sad thing 
to see a man fired with enthusiasm and overflowing 
with the milk of human kindness, laboring earnestly 
for years, and then to hear him confess that so far as 
he can judge his efforts have practically been in vain. 

Let us go back a little. Not so very long ago in 
all Europe there was but one Church, and it claimed the 
control of the gates of both heaven and hell. Every 
human being was under its dominion and had to accept 
its creed and conform to its standard of morality, other- 
wise eternal punishment of the most terrible kind was 
threatened. Surely, if the Church can make men moral, 



114 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

then was the time when every man and woman would 
be a living saint. And yet history records a condition 
of immorality, of inhuman cruelty, of gross oppression, 
such as we of today can scarcely believe one-tenth of 
it as being possible. Any institution with such a ter- 
rible record behind it, were it not conjoined with men's 
notions of the future, would have been hurled to the 
ground and trampled under foot. It is easy to say that 
a better means of elevating the race could have been 
devised, but the fact remains that it has persisted 
through all history, and so we must accept it as being 
the best possible so far. Nay, more, it will have a 
future, and possibly we may be able to forecast what 
that will be. 

All Protestant churches today are clearly in the 
waters of solution. They are eternally on the defensive, 
conceding point after point to the aggressor, until they 
no longer insist on belief as the only sure means of sal- 
vation, but more and more on proper conduct. They 
are becoming practically moralists, though they may 
call themselves religionists, and still endeavor to make 
men moral by appealing to their emotions. Being 
neither one thing nor another, they are fast losing their 
grip on the community, and are casting about how to 
regain their hold. They can no longer compel, they 
must supply what the public demand, and the puzzle is 
to know what that is. 



RELIGION. 115 

We are getting to be a very materialistic people 
nowadays, and look upon a church as little different 
from a business. If we get what we want, we patronize 
it and pay our money; if not, we stay away. There 
are good men and bad inside the Church, and those 
outside are little different, if any, so the mere form of 
church-going is no longer deemed a guarantee of 
respectability. It may be all wrong, but few believe 
in the possibility of future torment for unbelievers, 
so every one is trying to get the utmost pleasure out 
of this life. 

Many roads are presented to the pleasure-seeker, 
some of which look very promising but have a sorry 
ending. It is the business of the Church to demonstrate 
conclusively that the very best time can be had by 
treading the path it indicates, and if it goes the right 
way about it, it can easily prove its case. It must cease 
appealing to the emotional side of man, and deal logic- 
ally with his reason, and to do this it must explain the 
nature of his environment and how he must comport 
himself to be in harmony with it. No longer must 
religion be morality made emotional, but morality made 
reasonable. 

The preacher of the future will, I am convinced, be 
less of a theologian and more of a scientist. His themes 
will be the great laws of nature and how it will be to 
every one's advantage to accept the restrictions of 



Il6 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

conduct demanded by the community. This idea may 
bring a shock to many, but if moral worth be the 
standard they set up, and I know of none higher in this 
world, then let me point out to them that the most 
moral class in any community, in any country, in any 
race, are the scientists, the men who study nature's 
facts and nature's laws. Can any one point to a better 
living, more unselfish body of men than they, whether 
doctors, teachers, students, or the mere lover of nature 
in a simpler way. No matter how small the community 
there will be found some one whose every spare minute 
is devoted to flowers or birds or other animals. How 
about him ? I have never yet known an ardent lover 
of nature who was a bad man, and I can hardly fancy 
you ever did. And if you probe the scientist deep, 
you will rarely find him an enthusiast in religious 
dogma. 

So the conclusion of the whole matter is, in the 
interests of your children's morals, give them free 
access to nature, teach them the living facts about 
nature and nature's laws and you will be reasonably 
sure of attaining your end. You will find their natural 
tendencies that way, so all you need do is to clear all 
obstructions out of the channel and make it easy for 
them to be good and do good. Such training may 
never qualify them to wear the martyr's crown, but on 
the other hand they can not blossom into persecutors, 



RELIGION. 117 

for bigotry and science — true knowledge — can never 
occupy the same brain at the same time. 

Ere I conclude this chapter I wish to mention what 
is to me perhaps the greatest puzzle in the realm of 
fact. In the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, the bread 
and wine, after being blessed, is held by the Roman 
Catholic Church to be the actual body and blood of 
Jesus Christ, while Protestant denominations consider 
it as merely symbolical of the same. Now, here is a 
pure question of fact, yet millions of undoubtedly hon- 
est men and women hold absolutely opposite views on 
the subject. What can an ordinary individual think 
of such a controversy ? It is enough to make him doubt 
the value of all evidence and to make him wonder if, 
after all, we really exist or only think we do. 



Il8 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 



CHAPTER XL 



What is success? One of my pet weaknesses is to 
get a clear definition of a term in common use, and I 
need scarcely say that I have wrestled with this word 
off and on since my boyhood days. Thirty years ago 
the clergy of Scotland controlled the public schools and 
once a year they came in a body to the school I 
attended, gave us a few simple questions in arithmetic 
and spelling, a searching inquiry into our verbal knowl- 
edge of the Shorter Catechism, and then wound up by 
wordy orations about fighting the battle of the world 
and making a success in life. Then, when the school 
board system was organized, the fussy nonentities who 
managed affairs took the place of the ministers, were 
content to hear us read, and then inflicted on us even 
worse orations, in which they discoursed more or less 
disjointedly of the battle of life and of attaining suc- 
cess. As a young man, I listened to speeches by the 
hundred, and about my only recollection of them is that 
to be successful was the great thing. I do not think 
I exaggerate when I say that as a unit of a mass I have 



SUCCESS. 119 

been advised a thousand times to try to make a success 
of life, but not once have I been told how I would know 
when I had succeeded, and so it has been to me a long- 
felt want to know, for certain, what really constitutes 
success. I have no doubt but I voice the thoughts of 
the average man and boy when I express this idea, so 
many may think it rather foolhardy of me to proceed 
to give a definition of the word that will satisfy every 
one, and which, above all, will make it possible for 
everybody to succeed. 

In a vague, indefinite way certain ideals of success 
have been held up before the youth of all nations and 
races in all ages. Among primitive people the most 
successful is he who can slay the greatest number of 
his fellow men, especially if they be public enemies. 
The mighty warrior has the prominent seat round the 
council fire and the daintiest tid-bits at the feasts. He 
is given the most wives, has the biggest following, and 
when he dies, the greatest number of victims are slain 
upon his grave so that he will have plenty of company 
in the land of spirits. But we laugh at their ideal and 
pity them for a lot of ignorant savages. 

Alexander the Great was not a barbarian, but his 
idea of success was to conquer the known world of his 
day, and in his efforts he caused a loss of life that was 
simply appalling, and when he had succeeded he wept 
because there were no more worlds to conquer. His 



120 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

ideas of success were exactly those of the most primi- 
tive savage, even with all the civilization and luxury 
that was found in his court, yet who today would call 
him a successful man? He realized his ideals, but the 
world pronounces him a failure. 

Through the earlier part of the Christian era, on 
through the Middle Ages, even up to comparatively 
recent times, the same ideal was held; slaughter and 
rapine were the earmarks of a successful man, and he 
was promoted by his superiors, fawned upon by his 
inferiors and blessed by the Church at every turn. The 
greatest example of modern times was Napoleon Bona- 
parte, who, at the head of his conquering armies, 
seemed to have the world at his feet, made and unmade 
kings at his pleasure, and was the cause of shedding 
more human blood, inflicting more misery upon 
defenseless women and children, and wrought more 
pillage than any one man that ever lived : yet who is 
there today will call him a success ? 

He was almost the last of his kind. Today the 
ideals have changed and with the restrictions modern 
civilization has placed upon warfare it may be consid- 
ered impossible for another Alexander or Napoleon to 
arise. But the rapacious instinct still rules, and so for 
fifty years the man who amasses great wealth is the one 
who scores success. All our children's " good " liter- 
ature is little more than the tales of some boy born in 



penury, but who by industry, shrewdness and the 
power of thinking money from early dawn to dewy eve, 
aye, and dreaming of it, at last accumulates a gigantic 
reserve fund sufficient to insure him against starvation 
for centuries, but who dies without needing a cent of it. 
He is a successful man, at least so the books say, and 
our young people are advised to follow his example. 
The real pleasure in life, then, is to add more to the 
pile, and the bigger it grows the bigger a success the 
owner will be. 

But what about the poor wretch who has no pile, 
who never will have one though he lived a thousand 
years, for he is not built that way. He may be stupid, 
easy-going or physically unfit, or almost anything else 
but a moneymaker — and now I am describing the 
average man — is he to trudge through his allotted 
span, feeling every day that he is nothing more nor 
less than a failure, a worldly misfit, one who has had his 
chance and missed it — what about him, I say ? Oh, the 
Church provides for that, for while it is exceedingly 
obsequious to the rich man while alive, and preaches 
pathetic funeral sermons over his dead body, it also 
informs the poor wretches that this world is but a fleet- 
ing show wherein all is vanity, and that the man who 
fails to accomplish anything here will stand a specially 
good chance of having a prominent position in heaven. 
In fact, it is better to be a failure on earth, for they 



122 WHAT ARE WE HERE FORT 

picture the almost utter impossibility of the rich man 
ever seeing heaven, though when it comes to the par- 
ticular case they are always sure that the dear departed 
will be as much admired and respected in Paradise as 
he was on earth. With such passports he will get the 
best of it in both worlds. 

But is the rich man successful ? While he lives we 
say so, after he is dead we doubt it. The world admires 
a successful man and to perpetuate his memory they 
erect statues and monuments in public places. Are all 
those of recent times built to commemorate the Goulds, 
Vanderbilts and Pullmans, who died leaving millions 
upon millions of dollars behind them? Let the facts 
answer. I know of not one monument erected to the 
memory of a rich man, simply because he was rich, but 
I could, offhand, tell you a hundred built to the memory 
of men who were always poor. Lincoln, Grant, Bee- 
thoven, Nelson, Columbus, Audubon, Linnaeus, Burns, 
Shakespeare — none of these were moneymakers, yet 
the world calls them successful men. 

With all their wonderful power of speech human 
beings are after all very inarticulate; they have great 
difficulty in expressing their thoughts clearly. They 
very often act right, but can not talk right ; so they 
build monuments to the right men, pronounce them 
the highest examples of success, but fail to say clearly 
why they think them so. Let me endeavor to put their 



SUCCESS. 123 

ideas into plain words. They admire these men and 
call them great because they did something for the 
good of the race — they were, in fact, master workmen. 
But men who do must know before they can do, there- 
fore they must have learned, since all are born ignorant, 
and must have learned more than their fellow men. 
Learned what? They had to deal with facts, not 
dreams, facts of nature and nature's laws, and so they 
learned about them. Here we have the reason why the 
great warrior and the great moneymaker are consid- 
ered successful, for we measure the amount they learned 
by what they accomplished. The mere inheritor of 
money gets little respect from the world, since he has 
done nothing. Success, then, lies in knowing one's 
environment, and that man is most successful who 
learns most of nature's facts and laws in proportion to 
his ability and opportunities. 

This definition of success makes it possible for 
every one to be successful and to know that he is such. 
Nay, more, to achieve true success, to fulfil the purpose 
of his being he will find the country more suited than 
the crowded city, for in the one he will find nature 
ready for his study, in the other he is cut off from it. 
No longer need the dweller on the prairie bewail his 
lack of opportunity, but rather thank the kind fates for 
giving him such golden chances. " I ben on prairie 
for fourteen years and I learn someting new every 



124 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

day " ; so said an old Swedish farmer at a dinner held 
in connection with a country fair in Minnesota a few 
years ago. Think of it, ye jaded city idlers dying daily 
of ennui, a word the poor man does not know the mean- 
ing of, far less pronounce it correctly — think of it, 
something new every day ! and say if you do not envy 
this humble farmer. Something new every day ! The 
thought of it sends the blood dancing through my 
veins; why, it is enough to make a man wish to live 
forever. And yet, that is just what bounteous nature 
gives us lavishly — something new — not one thing, 
but thousands of new things, and we tread them under 
foot and never see them. Alas, it is too true, our eyes 
see in things only what they bring to them, and the 
one regret of my life is that instead of trying to thrash 
into me a dose of Latin and Greek, my teachers did not 
satisfy my longings and introduce me to the wonderful 
things that I passed by daily. I have tried to remedy 
the defect in later years, but I feel it is too late, and 
much as I have learned of the great joy of living, I 
know that I have missed much that I might have had. 
So I pay the penalty of another's ignorance, and so do 
we all. 

Let us look for a moment at the other way of doing 
things. This is Sunday, January 20, and today the 
wind has shifted to the south, driving away the zero 
weather we have had for some time, and melting the 



SUCCESS. 125 

snow that lies on the ground. We have a mild case of 
scarlet fever in the house, so the other young folks have 
been quarantined. They have never wearied a minute, 
for in the basement there is a work bench and a fair 
supply of first-class tools, and in our living-room a 
wonderful collection of what most people call " trash," 
consisting of a great variety of stones, bird nests, dried 
flowers and what not. They have arranged all these 
again and again, not very scientifically, but according 
to the facts they know. I make it a rule to volunteer no 
information,, but I answer every question they ask, get 
out the books and hunt for the information. Each day, 
therefore, gives them a new knowledge, so they start in 
to classify and arrange them all over again with a new 
zest. They find the old cases too big or too little, and 
down they go to the basement to remake them to suit 
new conditions. They never weary a minute, and have 
no time to quarrel, so that the task of managing them is 
reduced to a minimum. Today a new idea strikes 
them ; can they find anything new down at the marsh ? 
So, after dinner, we set out, myself, one boy aged ten, 
another aged six and a girl aged eight, with " Bobs " — 
a little rough-haired Scotch terrier — as attendant. 
The sun shines bright, the air is balmy and all around 
us the snow is disappearing in little streams of water, 
with here and there a pool. I say little, but trudge 
along, waiting for the questions to begin. As we get 



126 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

near the marsh, the elder boy remarks, " Everything 
looks as if it were dead," but six-year-old chimes in, 
with a thoughtful voice, " It isn't, though, it is only 
sleeping, and when the warm days come again won't it 
be lovely ! " 

But stop, here is a frozen pool, with water on the 
top of the ice ; let us look at it. " Why, I declare, 
there's a water scavenger swimming about as lively as 
can be," calls out the elder boy, and sure enough, there 
he is, and the little heads get together to watch his big 
hind legs kicking out vigorously. " Oh, look at that 
little black spider," is the next cry and we see him skim- 
ming about on the surface as if it were a balmy day in 
June, rather than a day in midwinter. But these heaps 
of dirt round about, what are they ? I don't know, but 
again the authority, the ten-year-old, tells me it is the 
end of a turtle's burrow. Then there are the skeletons 
of crayfish everywhere, and of course their claws are 
examined. " Oh, look at the lumps on the big weeds ; 
what makes them ? " " Well, let's see." So out comes 
the pocketknife, one is opened up and a wriggling mag- 
got is found inside. Half a dozen of the swellings are 
gathered to be taken home ; it is things we are after, 
and so we cart home everything that interests us. Here 
is another lump, but of a different shape; is there a 
maggot in this ? No, but we find a beautifully drilled 
hole, through which he escaped. He must have had a 



SUCCESS. 127 

very fine drilling device to get through such a hard 
lump. 

This is an ideal time to find birds' nests, for the 
trees are bare of leaves, so in a few minutes three are 
added to our collection — one a peewee's, another 
a wild canary's, the third a catbird's. The two former, 
each in a little branch, we know will be welcome to the 
housekeeper, for they make pretty ornaments on the 
wall. But in toiling through the woods six-year-old 
slips and falls. He gets up with a shout of glee, for he 
finds the cause of his downfall is a beautifully green bit 
of moss. Ten-year-old informs us that seeds of all 
kinds are in that moss, and if we take it home and water 
it, we will get hepaticas, jacks-in-the-pulpit, violets 
and goodness knows what, one after another. So we 
add it to our pile. 

We turn homeward, and find a pool in the middle of 
a bank. The melting snow is sending down little rivu- 
lets, and the young minds at once grasp the situation. 
That little elevation is a mountain, the decreasing 
wreath of snow is a glacier, the small rills are rivers, 
the pools are lakes, and so they see in an epitome what 
we older folks know is being done on the big scale of 
a continent. 

But now Bobs meets with an accident. We have 
crossed ditch after ditch on the ice, paying no heed to 
the film of water on the surface, and neither does Bobs. 
9 



128 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

But he does not know enough, his experience is very 
limited, and so when he comes to a deepish one with 
water almost a foot deep, he plunges in, and in an 
instant his piteous yelps break forth. I hasten to him, 
catch him by the neck and fling him on the farther 
bank. For Bobs' sake we start for home at our fastest 
speed, he racing on in front ; but there are ditches ahead, 
some with ice only on them, some with a little water. 
But Bobs is no longer taking chances, so the moment he 
reaches one he runs back to me and meekly waits till 
I catch him up and lift him across. Bobs gets home 
first and when we arrive he is snugly ensconced under 
the cook stove for the double purpose of drying and 
warming up. We have been gone hardly two hours, 
but have had a grand time, seen some new things, 
added a little to our knowledge of nature, and got 
enough material to keep certain young folks' hands and 
thoughts busy for many days to come. Does anybody 
know a better way? 

Compare this outing with the experience of one who 
first saw this world when the nineteenth century was 
young. Thomas Edwards, the famous Scotch natural- 
ist, who earned his living to the very end of his days by 
patching shoes, was cruelly treated by parents, teachers, 
ministers and neighbors because he dared take any 
interest in " beasts." It was considered a sure sign of 
natural depravity and original sin, so every effort had 



SUCCESS. 129 

to be made to purge him of it, even by the violent lay- 
ing on of hands. His life, like all those of his occupa- 
tion in those days, was a continuous struggle with 
extreme poverty, yet just before his death he said, 
" I know of no other pursuit on earth, either for 
a living or a pastime, from which as much real pleas- 
ure, innocent delight and unalloyed happiness can be 
drawn as from the study of the works of the Almighty. 
It is ennobling and educating, too. Neither do I know 
of any other occupation that is, in one or other of its 
branches, so easy of access to every one, as that of 
nature." Again, after describing the tremendous dis- 
advantages under which he had labored, he said, " With 
all the trouble and sacrifice, I must confess I have lived 
a very happy life." , 

Lived a very happy life! How many conquerors, 
statesmen, society leaders, millionaires, ministers, teach- 
ers, workmen, can look back and say they have lived a 
very happy life ? Truly, Thomas Edwards was a most 
successful man, because he learned more of nature's 
facts and nature's laws than did others of equal brain 
power and in a similar environment. He fulfilled the 
purpose of his being, and was happy. When all human- 
ity do likewise, I am convinced they will be equally 
fortunate. 

Many times each year it is my good fortune to be 
privileged to go through some of the finest-equipped 



I30 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

factories in this country, and while I have seen much 
to marvel at and admire, one phase always seemed 
pathetic to me, and that was the dull, mechanical way in 
which the average boy and man fed the machines. I 
have often remarked to the proprietors that such occu- 
pation would drive me crazy, much as I love machinery, 
and wondered if the terrible monotony did not make 
them restive. In the majority of cases it does not, in 
fact they rather prefer it that way, but every employer 
I find is on the alert for the first sign of intelligence in 
any one of his help, and at once pushes him along, for 
he needs brains in his business. 

But I have often tried to look a little beyond and 
wondered how such commonplace brains could find 
recreation in the hours of leisure. Not in study, not in 
admiring the works of nature, but at the saloon bar and 
in the cheap theater, listening to the rubbish served in 
the name of vaudeville. Had the youth in school spent 
as much time over nature's facts — the fads, as our 
wiseacres sneeringly call them — as he did over the 
dull, stupid stuff that was crammed into him in the 
sacred name of education, he would have learned to see 
many things in the material he handled and in the 
machine he controlled that were interesting. He would 
be able to tell why tools got blunt, why one lasted 
longer than another, how power was conveyed and util- 
ized, and a thousand and one things would interest him 



that today he neglects because he never sees. Alas, 
how few realize that we see in things only as much as 
our eyes bring to them. Outside the factory the world 
is full of mighty interesting things to the eyes that can 
see them, but our poor youth pass them by unheeding, 
because when we had the chance in school we never 
taught him to look for them. Do you think the saloons 
injurious to the morals of youth ; do you believe the 
cheap theater to be detrimental? If you do, do not 
waste your time, energy and breath trying to suppress 
them, because you can not, for they exist in response 
to the law of supply and demand ; but put — and do it 
quickly — something better in their place. And if you 
can find something better than what nature demands — 
a knowledge of her facts and laws — I will be more 
than surprised. Give up talking cant, which youth fresh 
from nature resents ; leave mawkish sentimentality 
alone ; accept the conditions as you find them ; let 
nature be your teacher, and have the moral courage to 
follow her to the bitter end, and you will be surprised 
how efficient she is in all that concerns the good of 
humanity. 

Speaking of the monotony of life as the young 
experience it, leads me to another thought. Living is 
arranged along very conventional lines, and the major- 
ity seem to drop into the routine after kicking over the 
traces once in a while. But there are certain natures 



132 WHAT ARE WE HERE FORT 

so constituted that they want to break the harness and 
run away. Ordinary routine is so dull that a more 
exciting life is craved, and the boy dreams of the sea, 
the cattle ranch or the mining camp. The young per- 
son is lucky to be a boy, because he can satisfy his 
longings and still be an honest, respected member of 
society. But if the young person be of the weaker sex, 
what then? If in comfortable circumstances, her vaga- 
ries for unconventionality can find vent in the stage, 
the music school, the art academy, the raising of pets, 
or cultivation of flowers — nay, a hundred ways. But 
in the lower social scale, the uninteresting home, the 
monotonous store or office, when it feels such, arouses 
cravings for the things that she sees higher people 
enjoy, and conceives to be their only interest, such as 
theaters and supper parties. Her means forbid the 
enjoyment; there is one way — you know the rest. 
This is a terrible blot on our civilization, and the bright- 
est minds of our race have striven to find a remedy. 
If my diagnosis be correct, that it is a breaking away 
from the burden of the conventional, put a better 
interest in its place. Make everything interesting by 
teaching the eye and the brain what to look for and 
what to see, so that every occupation will provide some- 
thing for the mind to linger on — and once again I 
must insist this can only be done by teaching nature's 
facts and nature's laws. 



SUCCESS. 133 

We all regret the overcrowding of our cities, and 
feel it would be better for the individuals and for the 
race if our population were more rural than urban. 
This concentration of humanity is largely due to the 
forces that demand the elimination of economic waste, 
but it is hastened by many mistaken ideas of the human 
race. Parents, anxious for the educational advance- 
ment of their children, push into the large cities, while 
the young folks migrate thither, as they believe there 
are greater opportunities there, or more variety and 
entertainment than is to be found in the country. 

If my idea of man's mission be correct, that it is 
our duty to study nature and nature's laws, then the 
city is far inferior to the country, for the inhabitant of 
the latter has nature's book always open before him, 
and happy is he who can read therein. If parents, espe- 
cially mothers, would talk more about subjects and less 
about people to their children, or to put it tersely, use 
the pronoun " it " more frequently, and the pronouns 
" he " and " she " less often, the young folks would 
develop an intelligence that would be surprising and 
see a thousand things of interest where before there 
was nothing but a bare prairie or a blank mountain 
side. When a child or youth finds country life uninter- 
esting, the parents and teachers are the only ones to 
blame. 

Young country people believe that folks of corre- 



134 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

sponding age in the cities spend every spare hour of 
their evenings at theaters, balls or parties. Never was 
a greater delusion. Trudging along streets, hanging 
around the corners, or talking rubbish to each other is 
a truer statement of the case. All the supposedly ideal 
pleasures cost money, and the average young man and 
woman find it possibly harder, on the average, to 
make a decent living in the big city than in the small 
town or country district, and therefore he or she are 
not in a position to spend a few dollars a week on 
amusements. About all they know of the theater, plays 
and performers is from a study of the theatrical news 
in the evening paper, and that can be read just as com- 
fortably a thousand miles away as in the street car on 
the way home: To the average young man from the 
country the big city is a rather lonely, uninteresting 
place when he tries to make a living in it, and were he 
not buoyed up by ambitions of some day making a pile 
of money, he would be apt to get out of it. 

Let me conclude this chapter with a short account 
of one of my experiences, which at the time took my 
breath away. I was born in a little country village of 
perhaps four hundred population. When I reached the 
age of nine we left it and, after wandering from one 
little village to another, settled for five years in a town 
of five thousand. At eighteen I left home to make my 
start in the wide world alone, and of course went to 



SUCCESS. 135 

the big city. At twenty-seven I married, and at thirty- 
two I took a fancy to visit my birthplace. So, accom- 
panied by my little boy, I set out. Reaching the village, 
I strolled up the short street, feeling myself a perfect 
stranger, and wondering if there were any there who 
remembered me and my people. The names on the 
stores were not as I knew them ; but one arrested me. 
It was above the door of a general merchant, and was 
that of an old school-fellow whom I had encountered 
twice in the cities where I had lived. He had been in 
the hardware business, and I wondered if it could pos- 
sibly be my old friend, whom I had not seen or heard 
of for many years. I stepped inside and sure enough 
it was he. After a few minutes' conversation, I 
jumped the question at him, " How could you be such 
a fool, Jim, to come back here after knowing what it 
was to live in a big city ? " He looked at me quietly 
for a minute and then began : " I know what it is to 
live in the city. Your day is given up to working hard, 
and is lengthened out by the time you take going to 
your work and returning. When you get home your 
children are either in bed or are sent there shortly after, 
so that your only chance of companionship with them is 
on Sundays. You do not know your next-door neigh- 
bor ; in fact, it is advisable not to know him, and for 
a certainty the people you are interested in live miles 
away, so you see them only occasionally. Of course, 



I36 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

wages are higher, but so are rents, and you must buy 
everything you use, so that when you get to the end of 
the month, the money is all spent, and so would more 
be if you had it. Now, here I am next door to my fam- 
ily all the day, and can see them as often as I feel like it. 
I know everybody in the village and their financial con- 
dition, thus I make no mistakes about the amount of 
credit each one gets. My hours are short, my work 
is easy, my running and living expenses low, so that 
at the end of each month I find I am a little more 
ahead, and I am free from worry. Honestly, who is 
the fool, you or I ? " 

He never got an answer, but his question has come 
back to me a thousand times, and the oftener it returns, 
the more I am inclined to suspect he was wise, espe- 
cially if he took full advantage of his leisure and sur- 
roundings to fulfil the law of his being, but I am 
afraid he did not. 



CONCLUSION. I37 



CHAPTER XII. 

CONCLUSION. 

Nature is a bountiful mother to us all. From every 
quarter she is pouring upon us with the most lavish 
profusion uncountable gifts that insure our bodily com- 
fort, that delight our eyes and enchant our ears. Think 
of her generosity in providing us with plenty of nour- 
ishing food, warm clothing, coal to heat us, wood and 
stone with which to build our homes, iron for our 
tools and machinery, water with which to quench our 
thirst and work our engines, medicine to heal our hurts 
and alleviate our pains ; all these she gives us and much 
more that we too readily forget. Surely we ought to 
love her for her gracious goodness to us, but we take all 
the gifts as our right and neglect the giver. Yet our 
past experience ought to make us behave differently, 
for never once has man sincerely and earnestly asked 
her for anything that would tend to his bodily com- 
fort, but she has lovingly responded. All that she asks 
is that we woo her assiduously and study her consci- 
entiously. 

She tempts us by every wile. Every minute of the 



I38 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

day she is decorating and adorning herself in a new 
garb to enchant our eyes. Now she decks herself in 
blazing sunshine, but in a few minutes she may lay 
aside all her gorgeousness and be as sad-eyed and 
demure as if weeping over our heedless indifference. 
Again she will clothe herself in a daring spectrum of 
colors, so resplendent but yet so beautifully harmonious 
that even a little child waxes enthusiastic over her 
gems, and rushes to gather them in handfuls ; but we, 
older grown, look callously on ; we have eyes, but 
we see not. Oh, the pity of it that a little child can see 
where we are blind ! 

Perhaps our ears are open to temptation. We can 
shut our eyes, but can not close our ears, so nature 
tunes a thousand pipes that discourse sweet melody 
from every bush and tree. Do we hear them? They 
are only birds, we say, and pass them by; the small 
voices of nature have no charms for us. Then she 
changes her mood, hushes the voice of the songsters, 
and roars with the thunder's voice. Now we hear her, 
but still neglect the call, and go on our way, piling up 
delusions about matters of which we know nothing, and 
neglecting every opportunity for betterment and lasting 
pleasure that lies right before us, so near that we 
stumble over them, yet never see them. 

Nothing happens in this world by chance. There 
are a thousand forces at work and the summation of 



CONCLUSION. 139 

their efforts produces a fact, something done. When 
we in our blindness fail to see the forces at work, we 
call the fact an accident, but we are learning by experi- 
ence and gradually extending the list of what we call 
" preventable accidents " and correspondingly reduc- 
ing the others. Nature is consistent in all her work; 
every one of her laws is absolute, and, willingly or 
unwillingly, we must study them and her and know her 
charms. She will brook no denial, no neglect; she 
must be wooed, and her behests must be obeyed. 

What fools we mortals have been and are! We 
have dared to call nature a monster; we have vilified 
ourselves, her greatest achievement, by proclaiming 
that we came from her hands unutterably vile, con- 
ceived in sin and shapen in iniquity, and so we have 
thwarted our kind mother at every turn. Wherever her 
finger pointed, that was the way we would not go, 
but she has lashed us with a thousand scourges, and 
now we see a glimmering of the light. Little by little 
it is dawning upon us that instead of trying to trammel 
the play of nature's forces, our policy should be to 
remove all obstructions and let the currents run freely. 

Man is no degenerate. He is no descendant of a 
perfect being. He is at the present moment at his 
best, a wondrous advance upon the first of his race who 
appeared on this earth ages ago. Bit by bit he is 
renouncing the brutal parts of his origin, replacing 



140 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

them with finer mental susceptibilities. Instinct he is 
replacing by reason, rage by indignation, sexual desire 
by love. Realizing his glorious progress in the past 
we can but wonder to what heights he will attain in 
the future. The same laws that have brought him to 
his present advancement are still at work, so his march 
will be onward and upward ; the future progress will 
be tremendously accelerated, for we are just beginning 
to practice the doctrine I am trying to teach. True it 
is still experimental, but the elimination of religious 
instruction in our schools, the introduction in its place 
of science and manual training shows the trend of our 
thoughts. Practice always precedes theory ; the for- 
mer has begun ; this book is an effort to set forth the 
theory on which it is based. 

Honor to whom honor is due, and so I have to con- 
fess that these thoughts probably had their origin in 
the remark of a little boy made to me over a dozen 
years ago. He came dancing into my classroom one 
morning, bubbling over with glee. I asked him what 
made him so happy, and he told me it was his birthday, 
that he was now ten years old. I have always liked to 
put puzzling questions to children, and so I asked him 
why that made him so happy, in fact, what was the 
good of being born at all. He looked dumfounded for 
a minute, and then his face beamed. " Of course, it is 
worth being born, for, look at the lots of things I 



CONCLUSION. I4I 

know that I would not have known if I had not been 
born." If that boy be still alive, he is now a man, and 
I am certain that by this time his parents and teachers 
have educated him out of the knowledge he then pos- 
sessed. 

And that reminds me of another thought. Did you 
ever notice how wonderfully a young mind fresh from 
nature can leap like a young goat from pinnacle to pin- 
nacle of knowledge, without bothering about all the 
details that lie between? The teacher drudges away 
his hours elucidating little point after little point and is 
so interested in them that he fails to catch the force 
of the great laws behind them. Then comes along a 
fresh, young mind, gives merely a passing glance at 
the other's results, and in a manner that is simply 
astounding proceeds to generalize upon the facts and 
to deduce the law. 

One word more. I know you want to ask me two 
questions : " Why have we come here to learn ? " and 
" What are we to do with our knowledge once we 
attain it?" I frankly confess I do not know. It is 
hard enough to reason upon the facts that are ever 
with us, therefore it is practically impossible to theorize 
when we have absolutely no data. From birth to death 
we can learn facts and study laws, and thence draw 
conclusions, but outside these two lines we know 
nothing. 



142 WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? 

Therefore, all we can do is to honestly strive to 
learn what we are here for, and then do it steadfastly. 
Knowledge did not work man's downfall, but has been 
the means of his advancement — will be the agent of 
his progression to a height to which there are no limits. 

At the beginning of the first chapter I said we were 
either here for a purpose or we were not, and up to the 
present I have argued on the theory that we had a 
mission. It is time to consider the other proposition, 
that possibly we merely happen to be — that we live 
through our little day and depart. If this be true, then 
plain everyday common sense says let us understand 
the objects that surround and the forces that influence 
us, so that we may have the greatest pleasure in life. 

So, whichever way we look at it, the beginning and 
possibly the end of wisdom for mortal man is to under- 
stand his environment — to know nature's facts and 
nature's laws. 



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PHOTOGRAPHY. Part II - - - Price, 50c. 
This treats of darkroom work, chemicals, developers, 
developing, fixing, intensification, reduction, dark- 
room troubles, improving negatives, etc. 

THE PHOTO = BEACON EXPOSURE 

TABLES Price, 25c. 

Guaranteed correct. 30,000 sold. 

AMATEUR PORTRAITURE AT HOME 

The only book on the subject ever published. Price, 50c. 

ARTISTIC LIGHTING, by James Inglis. Price, 50c. 
This treatise describes in very clear language the best 
lighting for portraiture, and is extremely valuable to 
both photographers and art students. It has revo- 
lutionized professional photography. 

PICTORIAL LANDSCAPE PHOTO G= 

RAPHY, by John A. Hodges - - - Price, 75c. 
Illustrated by 43 beautiful photographs from nature. 
A guide to pictorial composition and lighting. 



THE PHOTO-BEACON CO. 

Security Building .... CHICAGO 



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Photo = Beacon 
Exposure 
Tables are 

Guaranteed Correct 



Worth their weight in gold." 

GEO. T. TODD, U. S. Weather Bureau, 
Dodge City, Kansas 

They have been worth to me $200.00. 

G. F. GREEN, Waynoka, O. T. 



Price, 25c. 30,000 Copies Sold 



TBe Photo=Beacon Company 

409 Security Building . . . Chicago 
Eastern Office, 621 Broadway . New York 



Pictorial 
Photography 

is the title of a series 
of 12 articles on 

Artistic Principles 

By 

Professor Lucius W. Hitchcocfe 

that will appear in 
THE PHOTO-BEACON 

during 1902 



Practical articles by practical men in cOery issue 
15 beautiful pictures et)ery month 



Price, $1.00 a year - - Single copy, 10 cents 



THE PHOTO=BEACON CO. 

Security Building * ■* 4 4 CHICAGO 



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radical Books on 
Practical Subjects 



1. 


Designing and Drawing 


2. 


Dyes, Stains, Inks, Lacquers, 
Varnishes and Polishes 


3. 


Wood=carving 


4. 


Gouge-work and Indented 
Woodwork 


5. 


Picture=frame Making by 
Novel Methods 


6. 


Poker=work 


7. 


A Guide to Plain Penmanship 



All Beautifully Illustrated. Price, 25 cents each 

IHe Photo=Beacon (g 

Chicago 



NOV 25 IQQ1 






Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proces 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Oct. 2004 

PreservationTechnologies 



